Sorry, I read a review that said it didnt make sense, and I completely agree. So here is the new and reviewed version of chapter 5!
Back at Baker St. we have nothing else on our minds, we're completely focused on the cipher. Father and John are standing, looking at the pictures of the cipher. I observe them from the sofa, with my legs curled up to my chest. Both men are talking over everything that happened, to see if there were any bits of information they had missed.
"So the killer goes to the bank and leaves a threatening cipher for Van Coon, Van Coon panics and goes to his apartment locks himself in, later that night he dies."
John continues, "The killer finds Lukis at the library, and leaves the cipher on the shelf where he knows it'll be seen, Lukis goes home." "Later that night, he dies too." Dad finishes.
John sighs, "Why did they die Sherlock?" "Only the cipher can tell us." He then turns to me.
"Call Raz."
"Haha, no." I tell him, if he thinks I'm calling that little shit he can think again.
Dad eyebrows furrow, "Why not? I'm only asking you to talk to him, he's not that repulsive."
I chuckle, "Dad, I'm not flirting with him again so you can get some answers from him. It's bad enough that you do that with Molly Hooper."
He sighs, "Just one call and you'll never have to see him again, ok?" he gives me his best puppy-dog eyes, how can I refuse them. "Fine," I sigh as I get my phone out of my pocket and make the call.
"You alright sexy?"
"Um, hello to you too Raz," I say rather too coldly. Dad gives me a stern look and mouths 'flirtier' to me. I roll my eyes at him.
"How's my sexy beast been?" I say as I let out a girly giggle. I really don't think my dad should be encouraging this.
"The sexy beast is great thanks, how's the sexy little kitten been?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say kittens are sexy, how about the sexy tiger…roar!" I know I am being stupidly over the top, but if it means never making any contact with him ever again the its definitely worth it!
"What are you doing now, its been ages since I seen you last"
"Aww, I've missed you too Raz. I'm in town at the moment and I thought I haven't seen any of you work in ages, I thought I might come and look at one of your masterpieces."
"Haha yeah, I'm at the gallery now, maybe you should come and check it out. Its called Urban Blood-lust Frenzy."
"Well, that's certainly caught my attention. Hehe, I'll see you in a bit then," I give one more last girly giggle before hanging up and glaring at my dad,
"I'm never doing that again!" "Why not! Its highly amusing…roar?" he questions.
"Oh shut up!" I roll my eyes and grab my coat and my father and John do the same. As we walk across Albert Square, dad begins explaining everything.
"The world is run on code and ciphers, everything from the million pound security system at the bank to the chip and pin machine you took exception to. Cryptography inhabits our every waking moment."
"Yes, ok, but…" enquires John.
"But its all computer generated," I explain to the confused John.
"Yes they're al electronic codes, electronic ciphering methods. This is different, its an ancient device, modern code breaking methods wont unravel it."
"Ok, but where are we going?"
"I need to ask some advice," dad says quickly, pretending like he hadn't said it.
"Sorry? What was that?" John asked, knowing he will never hear dad say that ever again.
"He wont say it again, he's to proud for that," I tell John,
"We need advice from and…expert (?) on painting." We round the corner to the gallery and find Raz putting the finishing touches to his 'Urban Blood-lust Frenzy.'
"Part of my new exhibition," Raz informs us. I can hear the disappointment in his voice. He thought I was coming alone. Dad glances at the…picture? I'm not quite sure what it is. "Interesting," he comments. Raz rambles on chuckling to himself, "I call it, Urban Blood-lust Frenzy,"
"That's catchy," John also comments.
"I've got two minutes before a community support officer come round that corner. Do we have to do this while I'm working."
Dad hands Raz his phone and shows him the picture, and Raz throws the spray paint can to me, getting paint on my coat. He is so going to pay for that. John looks at Raz with a tone of disgust on his face, saying 'how dare you treat someone like that,'
"Know the author?" Dad asks, oblivious to everything else.
"I know the paint, hard-core propellant, I'd say zinc."
"And what about the symbols? Do you recognise them?"
" I ain't even sure its proper language,"
"Two men have been murdered Raz, deciphering these is the key to finding out who killed them."
"And this is all you've got to go on? That's hardly much now is it?" My patience was now wearing thin.
"Look, Raz, are you going to help us or not?" I ask coldly.
"I'll ask around, anything for my lovely tiger… roar." Me and dad both roll our eyes.
"Somebody must know something about it," dads voice raising slightly.
"OI!" I turn around to see two police officers running towards us. I think that this would be a good opportunity for Raz to pay for what he did to my coat. Then I realise that I have the paint can in my hand.
"What the hell do you think your doing? This gallery is a listed public building."
"This wasn't me, I was just holding it for…" I was going to motion to Raz with my head, but I turn to see that Raz and dad had done a runner.
"Well…poo!" I turn around and smile, "there has obviously been a mistake…"
"I don't think so Kate Holmes, you have had far to many run ins with the police in the last year." Oh great, they know who I am.
"Yeah, and I've helped the police catch murderers as well, which is more than you have done in the past year." I bite my tongue and remember to be nice to the officers who would take pleasure in arresting me. Luckily, I had John there to stop me insulting them further.
"I was here as a witness, this wasn't Kate's doing. It was some nutter who lobbed the can at Kate to hold." The officer wasn't buying any of it, "Then how did this wet paint get here?"
"The authors name is Raz, he does lots of graffiti in the area," the officers face light up in recognition.
"Are you sure," we both nod, "Know that if you're lying then we will bring you in to the station, yeah?" we both nod. The two officers walk off and we catch a cab to Baker St. When we walk in, I hear the voice of dad muttering,
"You've been a while,"
"Yeah well, you know what its like, officers don't like to rush their questioning," I explain to him, "this is the fifth time that the officers have caught me for something that isn't my fault!" Dad obviously wasn't listening.
"Yes, good," he mutters. I ignore him and sit of the sofa as he slaps a book shut, "this symbol, I still can't place it." John makes the mistake of beginning to take his coat off. Dad walks over to him and pushes his coat back on his shoulders, "No, I need you to go to the police station, his personal effects will have been impounded, get hold of his diary or something that would tell us of his movements," he grabs his coat and motions for me to follow.
"We're going to see Van Coons PA, if we retrace their steps, somewhere they'll coincide." And luckily enough, they did.
After visiting Van Coons Pam we tracked his steps to China Town with taxi tickets and a restaurant receipt. We wander around the street, looking for any signs that could lead us to know what he was doing before he died.
"So, you brought your lunch from here…" dad mumbles, talking more to himself than to me as we walk down the crowded street, "en route to the station, but where were you headed from? Where did the taxi drop you?" he bumps into a small figure as he walks around, frantically trying to find the answer. I look up to see that the small figure was in fact John. He would kill me if he knew I called him small. Dad just ploughs on in his own little world.
"Eddie Van Coon brought a valuable package here the day he died, whatever was in that suitcase. I've managed to piece together a picture using scraps of information, credit card bills, receipts…"
"Sherlock…" john tries to interrupt, getting nowhere.
"He flew back from china and then he came here…"
"Sherlock…" John tried again, but dad ignores him.
"Somewhere on this street, somewhere near…"
John successfully interjected this time. "That shop over there," he says as he points to a shop entitled The Lucky Cat.
Dad looks at him in confusion, "How can you tell?"
"Lukis' diary," he claims showing dad the diary, " he was here too. He wrote down the address" I try and fail to suppress a giggle as dad looks ahead and says a simple, "Oh."
We walk across the busy street to the Lucky Cat. A Chinese woman greets us and we wander in, trying to haggle John into buying a lucky cat for his wife, causing me to smirk slightly, he wishes. I head over to a fragile cup on display, and carefully lift it up to see the familiar symbols, the cipher.
"Dad?" I call him over, to show him what I've found.
"I see it," he murmurs and stalks out of the shop, expecting me and John to follow.
"Its an ancient number system, Hang Zou. These days only street trader use it," he explains. It was stupidly simple, how could I not have known? I internally slap myself. The only thing that made me feel better was that fact that dad had no idea either.
"Those were numbers written on the wall at the bank and at the library," he states as he walks over to a market stall to show us. "What we thought was an artists tag was a number fifteen," I mumble to myself, still annoyed at myself.
"And the what we thought was a blindfold, the horizontal line, that was a number too. A Chinese number one." John sighs happily as dad wanders off, "We've found it."
Me and John both stop in our tracks as we notice a woman with a camera pointed in our direction. We both dismiss this and catch up to dad. John declares that he is hungry, so we stop off at a diner.
"You should eat something," dad tells me. I'm not in a good mood, but a smile never hurt anyone. So I smile a brilliant, verging on creepy, smile and decline the offer. "I'm sure John, as a doctor, will agree that a growing girl, such as yourself, needs food regularly," he says looking at John to back him up. John just clears his throat and mutters, "yeah, what he said," and continues to look at the menu.
"Really dad, I'm fine." He glances at me, and then places his steepled hands under his chin. Surprisingly, when the waitress comes to take Johns order, dad orders something as well.
"You don't normally eat on a case," I say.
"I wasn't ordering it for me," he retorts. I laugh quietly, "I hate you." He hums back in response before resuming his thinking pose. John begins to talk, reviewing his notes so far.
"Two men, travel back from China, and head straight for the Lucky Cat Emporium. What did they see?" he enquires.
"Its not a case of what they saw," dad mumbles, "Its what they both brought back in those suitcases." Me and John consider this for a moment.
"And you don't mean duty free," I add. The waitress brings our food over and dad pushes the plate over in my direction. I roll my eyes at him, but eat like he wants me to. Dad leans forward and carries on talking as we eat, "Think about what Sebastian told us about Van Coon, about how he stayed afloat in the market."
"He lost five million…" John starts.
"Made it back a week later," I finish for him, of course, "that's how he made such easy money." John smiles slightly, "he was a smuggler," he concludes.
"It makes perfect sense. Van Coon was a businessman, making his way to and fro from china, Lukis was the same. Both smuggling out of China and the Lucky Cat was their drop off."
"But why did they die," John voices the unanswered question, "it doesn't make sense, if they both turn up at the shop and deliver the package, why would someone then threaten the and kill them after they finished the job?" I was contemplating this when I came up with a solution.
"What if one of them was light fingered? Stole something from the hoard?" I tell them my idea and dad finishes it off for me with a smile on his face, "and they don't know who took it so they threatened them both? Brilliant!" he tells me.
"I know, I can do that sometimes."
As John tucks into his dinner once more, dad looks observantly out the window. I follow his eyes and sees what he sees. The yellow pages outside the flat.
"Tell me," he starts, "When was the last time it rained?" and then he gets up from the table hurriedly and stalks outside. I follow, glad to not have to eat that food, it tasted like rabbit piss…not that I've every tasted rabbit piss…yeah.
Dad walks over and crouches down before the yellow pages and observes that it's still damp from the rain on Monday. He rings the doorbell, but since its obvious no one is in the apartment, I walk around the back to see if there is any way in. I see the stairs and attempt to reach them. After a failed attempt, I try again running, pushing myself up with the wall and grabbing the bar. I run up the steps, with John protesting behind me.
"Kate!" he hisses at me.
"Its ok John, no ones home!" I hiss back. I climb through the already open window with dad behind me. I nearly knock a vase over, but I grab it before it hit the floor. However there was a watermark on the floor, but I didn't knock over any water.
"Someone's been in here before us." I whisper, dad just nods. I walk about, looking at the flat that was left in a hurry, whereas dad does all the logical things like sniffing the laundry… and sniffing the milk… and inspecting the carpet. I think I have much to learn still.
"Size eight feet, small but athletic." I pick up and inspect a picture of two small children, no doubt Soo Lin Yao and her brother, maybe. There were finger print streaks down the small girl, almost like someone had stroked that part of the frame. Dad too, observes the frame, "Strong hands, our acrobat. Why didn't he close the window when he left… Oh stupid, stupid," he scorns himself, as I realise what he means.
"He's still here." I mutter. Dad nods in confirmation. We both look towards the clothes…thing, I'm not sure and don't care what its called. Dad cautiously walk over to it and, I one swift movement, yanks it to one side to reveal no one there. At that moment, I get hit on the back of my head and I hit the floor, causing me to wind myself. I look up to see a man, clearly, wrapping a cloth around his neck and trying to choke him. I attempt to get to my feet, but fail and end up crawling to a chair to help me get up. I can see dad fighting for air as the person places something in his coat pocket. I run up behind the mystery person and give him a punch to the gut, causing him to double over, and I then kick his behind, hoping he would fall over. This failed as he used this as propel himself further away from me and run out of the back window. I'm about to follow when, dad calls out my name, knowing I'll get really riled on getting that man if I didn't stop now. I turned my attention to my dad, and getting him up and walking again. And also to John who was waiting terribly impatiently outside. As he sits up, dad reveals a little origami lotus that the attacker left behind, so now we know it's the same people doing this. We walk out the door to find John looking rather miffed.
"The milks gone off and the washing is starting to smell, someone left here in a hurry three days ago." His voice sounds rather odd, like a dying cat to be honest.
"Someone?" John questions.
"Soo Lin Yao, we have to find her," I look at the floor and pick up a note that was at my feet.
Soo Lin
Please ring me
Tell me you're ok Andy
"How?" John questions yet again. I open it to see it's an envelope from the National Antiquities Museum.
"We can start with this." I say. And we walk off to catch a cab to the museum.
"You've gone all croaky, are you getting a cold?" John asks. So many questions.
Dad coughs out an "I'm fine."
At the museum, we meet up with one of her co-workers, Andy, the one who wrote the note.
"When was the last time you saw her?" dad enquires.
"Three days ago, here at the museum. This morning they told me she had resigned, just like that. Left her work unfinished." He shrugged. He fancied her, totally. "What was the last thing she did on her final afternoon?"
"I can show you, if you like?" Andy stutters out.
He takes us to the 'behind the scenes' of the museum.
"She does this demonstration for the tourists. A tea ceremony, so she would have packed up her things and left them in here." He explains as he opens up the vault. While I was looking down the isle, dad had wandered off. I turned around to see what he was looking at. The cipher, written on a statue.
"We have to get to Soo Lin Yao," dad says as we leave the museum.
"If she's still alive," the optimistic John adds. "Kate! Sherlock!" someone yells. I turn around to see… oh its Raz.
"I've seen something you'll like," he grins.
He takes us to the skate park, which I'm so familiar with.
"If you were going to hide a tree, a forest would be the best place to do it don't you think?" Dad observes.
"What a great metaphor," I comment, "so poetical." He rolls his eyes at me.
"People would just walk by, unable to decipher the message." Raz points us over to a newly painted graffiti sign.
"That's the exact same paint?" dad asks.
"Yep," Raz replies positively. "
John, Kate, if we're going to decipher this code we're going to need more evidence."
We all split, to cover more ground. After an unsuccessful 20 minutes of looking for any signs of the cipher, I receive a call from John claiming that he had found it. I tell him to take a photograph and wait for me. It takes me 5 minutes of running to find John.
"I tried calling your dad but he wouldn't pick up," 'typical' I think.
"Can you go and find him? I'll wait here for you." I puff out; he sighs and nods, jogging off the way I came. After five minutes of standing in silence, I hear the clattering of a bottle on the floor to my right. I step noiselessly towards the sound. I cling to the side of the wall and quickly pop my head around the corner to see a shadowy figure doing the same as me. I hear the crunching of footsteps on stones as the figure runs away, with me hot in pursuit. Only guilty people run. After sprinting for about five minutes, my vision begins to blur. Jesus, this guy was fast. There was a wall ahead, which the runner had no intention of avoiding. He manages to jump over it so gracefully. Whereas, I kind of run into it rather than over it. I grab onto the top of the wall and roll over it, so graceful. Sarcasm.
"Shit," I mutter to myself, as I see the anonymous figure carry on running into the shadows. When he is out of sight, I turn back and settle on a steady jog back to the wall. When I get back to where we were, I see dad and John already there, with dad grasping hold of Johns face and spinning him around. Right…Its not that I'd have a problem if my dad was gay, but still, I don't want to see it.
"Shhh John, close you eyes and concentrate, I need you to concentrate, close your eyes."
"What? Why, why?" John had gone strangely high pitched. Dad moves his hand from his face to his arms, and starts spinning him around.
"I need you to maximise your visual memory. Try to picture what you saw. Can you picture it?"
"Yeah." "Can you remember it?"
"Yes."
"You remember the pattern?"
"Yes."
"How much can you remember?"
"Look don't worry…"
"Because the average human memory on visual matters is only about 62% accurate."
" Yeah, well don't matter because I remember all of it."
"Really?"
"Yeah well at least I would if I could get to my pockets." John yanks away and reaches for his phone. "I took a photograph."
I snort, and they both turn around startled by my unknown presence.
"That is the funniest thin I've seen all day!" I giggle slightly. That earns me a glare from dad.
"Where did you go?" John asks
"There was a mysterious hooded figure who hid from me then ran, so I chased him."
"And…" my expectant dad asks.
"He was very good at jumping walls," I sigh; I'm determined to learn how to jump walls now.
We make our way back to Baker Street.
It's late when we get back and dad is searching for clues in the cipher.
I sleep on the sofa, rather restlessly, and when I wake up, I see John has fallen asleep at the desk, leaning on his hands. He is going to have a bad neck today. He wakes up to the sound of dad's voice.
"They always come in pairs. The numbers, they all come with partners."
"God, I need to sleep," John sighs in tiredness. "
Why did he paint it so near the tracks?"
"No idea," John yawns.
"Thousands of people pass by there everyday…Of course."
"He needs some way to communicate with the people in the underworld," I state.
"Of course, he need information. Whatever was stolen, he wants it back. Its somewhere here in a code…"
"We can't crack this without Soo Lin Yao," I say as I stand, "We need to find her."
I walk to my room to quickly freshen up, to go to the museum and find out more information.
"Yes…good," John sighs as I exit the room.
"Two men who travelled back from China, were murdered, and the killer left them messages in Hang Zou numerals." Dad tells the man, Andy, who we talked to the other day. While they interrogate the poor man, I go and inspect the ancient Chinese teapots.
"Soo Lin is in danger, that cipher was exactly the same as the other two. They mean to kill her as well." John cuts in.
"Look, I've tried everywhere, friends colleges, I don't know where she is, and she could be a million miles away," he speaks panic stricken.
I have noticed something, but I would if dad has noticed.
"Can you tell me some more about these tea pots?" I ask, unintentionally sounding innocent.
"The pots were her obsession. They need urgent work, if the clay starts to dry out then it can start to crumble. Apparently you have to keep making tea in them." Dad joins me, but he has to bend down to get a close look at the pots.
"Yesterday only one of those pots were shining…" he started.
"Now there are two," I finish for him. We both share a knowing glance. Soo Lin is still here.
We visit/break into the museum at night to try and pay Soo Lin a visit. We watch her as she collects her teapots and starts the tea making process. Me and John stay in the shadows as dad approaches her.
"Fancy a biscuit with that," he asks. She gasps as she turns around and nearly drops the teapot. Dad catches it in mid air, "centuries old, don't drop that." He flicks on the lights, which reveals me and John.
"Hello."