"What is it?" asked John. "What does it mean?"
Sherlock tore off in the direction of the morgue. They clattered straight through the main doors into the gloomy room. It was a very sinister place, with rows of bodies zipped up inside body bags lined up neatly in the order they had arrived.
Sherlock strode over to a body in the corner, unzipped it, and peered at the body. "Ah," he said. "As I suspected. Clever, Molly! Now, John, you are probably about to explode with questions. Let me explain. At seven o'clock, she was attacked by a man with a gun. She asked us to save her and said that there is bomb in the DNA Lab."
"What?" said John, thoroughly confused.
"That was the message Molly sent! You see, this here is Alfonso Aragon," he said, pointing at the corpse. "Do you notice how little bruising there is? I am an expert in post-mortem bruising, and this is not at all how Molly described it in her report."
"I still don't see how you got that message from the original document," said John uncertainly.
Sherlock took out the paper and pointed at the column of words.
"It's clear as day to me," said Sherlock with a hint of snarkiness. "It's an easy code, really. Molly is no code maker, but she got the message across without alerting her captor, and that is all that counts in a code."
Sherlock looked around for a pen. John didn't have one, so Sherlock took one from the pocket of Aragon's hospital gown. Then, he underlined certain words on the crumpled page.
At seven o'clock, the patient died from a heart
attack. The patient had previously said his good-
byes to his living relatives, including a young
man who was his only living son. The patient
had a pale countenance, a normal occurrence
given the circumstances of his death. Just
under his eyes there was a slight greenish and
navy blue tint. There were no abnormalities
save the discoloring. I will check in lab for the
meaning of this bruising. Perhaps I will resort to
Sherlock's riding crop technique to find answers.
Because of this unusual bruising, I have had to
occupy the complaints of the patient's son, who
may be concerned that the discoloration and the
bruising will remain during the funeral. More data
in the DNA Lab.
"Do you understand now?" asked Sherlock. John nodded in response.
"Oh, this disproves that theory quite well," said Sherlock. "Of course! I'm blind! I knew there was something more to the story."
"The problem isn't blindness, Sherlock, as much as it is trust," snapped John. "Maybe you should put a little more faith into your friends before going off on some wild goose chase to prove that we're all secret undercover criminals."
Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, but the dangerous look on John's face deterred him from arguing.
"Do you… trust me?" asked Sherlock, looking very confused.
"Of course I do," responded John. "That's what friends do. They trust each other."
Sherlock, for the first time John had ever seen him, looked completely baffled. John couldn't tell what was going inside Sherlock's head but it seemed to him that Sherlock was trying to solve the most difficult mystery he had ever encountered. His eyes were darting around connecting puzzle pieces in his head and his face was contorted in concentration.
"Sherlock," said John. "Are you OK?"
Sherlock slowly came out of his reverie, seeming to realize that he was standing in the morgue and John was standing in front of him.
"Yeah, of course I'm OK," said Sherlock in a slightly higher voice than normal. "We're on a case, right?"
John nodded, bewildered by the turn of events.
Suddenly, Sherlock was back in his element. He looked down at Aragon's body and replaced the pen inside his pocket. As he did so, the outline of a rectangular shape showed up against the fabric. Sherlock slid the shape from the body's pocket and saw that it was a note.
It was a small scrap of paper torn roughly from a notebook bearing only two words:
Waterloo Bridge
"Yes," cried Sherlock joyfully, zipping up the body bag and walking out of the room. "Because the bomb placed here would have supposedly destroyed us, the bomber must have already laid plans to continue with the random terror strikes."
"What about Molly, though?" said John as they stormed through the front door. "She's being held captive. Shouldn't we try to rescue her?"
"That is not the most pressing concern," replied Sherlock, hailing a cab.
"When the bomber realizes that the bomb didn't go off, he'll blame Molly. He might try to kill her."
"We cannot concern ourselves with that for the time being," said Sherlock stoically. "Averting this explosion is more important than rescuing Molly. And as far as we know, Molly is already dead."
On that somber note, they climbed into a cab and directed the driver to the Waterloo Bridge. Despite the traffic, they soon arrived on the banks of the Thames, a few hundred meters from the base of the bridge. In five sweeping arches, the bridge elegantly spanned the river.
But Sherlock and John paid the marvellous feat of engineering little attention, instead focusing on the small pier that extended out into the water. A small rowboat was docked at it. After a quick conversation with the owner, John and Sherlock climbed aboard and rowed the small boat towards the hulking bridge. Little chunks of ice swirled past their oars as they rowed by.
They made for the leftmost concrete support. They rowed in a circle around the massive pier, looking up at the small parapet formed between the two concrete struts that held up the bridge. They saw no sign of the bomb. They did the same for the other three piers, finding nothing.
"They must not have placed it yet. We'll stay nearby until it is placed."
He directed the boat to the nearby shore.
"Are you certain that it is not a false trail?" said John, using the oar to pull their boat forward. "The bomber might've forced Molly to write it to draw us off the pursuit."
"I am certain."
John waited for the explanation.
"I am speculating that Molly asked the bomber to go back in and complete her work under the pretense that people would suspect foul play if she left her work incomplete. I believe that the bomber accompanied Molly inside the building using a back entrance and watched her from a distance as to not appear suspicious. Thusly, Molly went over to the body in the morgue, writing the coded death notice with her back turned to the window, where the bomber watched. She was able to slip the note into the dead man's pocket because she was positioned in front of the body."
"Why wouldn't the bomber follow Molly into the morgue?" asked John.
"There are many possible explanations," responded Sherlock. "But there's not enough time for them now. Unless I'm very mistaken, our quarry approaches."
John followed Sherlock's gaze and saw a small, two-person motorboat coming down the river. Sherlock and John dragged the boat into the water and stepped inside, picking up their oars.
"We'll hide behind this pier," said Sherlock, pointing at the nearest support. "You have your revolver, I hope?"
John checked the holster that was hidden under his jacket. It was comforting to feel the shape of the handle, even though it was covered by several layers of fabric.
They rowed back out into the river and came to a stop behind the concrete pier, their little craft bobbing up and down in the sheltered water. Cars hurtled along overhead and the boat Sherlock had spotted earlier came ever closer.
There looked to be two people on board. One was in the stern, handling a motor. The other held a fishing rod and was looking out over the bow. Soon, the motorboat came even with the bridge.
"Let's go," said Sherlock, taking his oar.
Using the concrete piers to hide their approach, they rowed their boat to the pier behind which the other vessel had vanished.
With a nod from Sherlock, they rowed around the pier furiously. But instead of encountering the other boat, they found the space under the arch empty.
"There they are!" yelled John, pointing at a rapidly escaping motorboat. "They must've seen us coming!"
"It was the man who rented us the boat," said Sherlock, "They must've asked him if he had seen anyone fitting our descriptions."
He dug his oar into the water and pulled back a swirl of icy water. They both rowed as hard as they could. Even so, their little boat was much slower than the motorboat.
Up ahead of them, the boat pulled alongside the same harbor Sherlock and John had rented their boat from. The person with the fishing pole jumped out of the boat and sprinted off to the street. The other person on the boat sent his craft speeding away.
Their feverish rowing paid off and Sherlock and John leapt to shore in pursuit of the bomber. They saw him climb inside a black car which had been waiting for him and glance back at the pier nervously.
"Quickly, John!" yelled Sherlock, sprinting after the car.
They spilled out into the center of the street, running along the center line and ignoring the blaring of the car horns. The black car barreled along ahead of them, slowly but steadily drawing away.
"We'll never catch him," wheezed John.
"Oh, yes, we will!" cried Sherlock. He came to a stop and drew a small mirror out of his pocket. Finding the sun with his mirror, Sherlock angled the sunlight toward the rear-view mirror of the van riding just in front of the black car. From there, the directed sunlight blared right into the eyes of the driver in the black car.
Suddenly, the black car stopped. As Sherlock and John hurried forward, they saw someone climb out of the passenger door.
The figure sprinting in front of them made a beeline across the street.
"He's headed to Waterloo Station!" yelled Sherlock, watching as their prey disappeared into a crowd of commuters.
Sherlock and John plunged into the group themselves, desperately pushing through the closely-packed crowd. With dread, they saw a train roll into the station, the wheezing brakes hissing loudly. The man hurriedly shoved himself into a random car, elbowing people out of the way and glancing back at his hunters, who were still fighting through the crowd.
"He's getting away!" said John, getting buffeted aside by a heavy-set businessman wielding a large suitcase.
"BOMB!" screamed Sherlock.
As soon as he said the word, almost everyone in the station dropped whatever it was they were doing and darted away to the exit, tripping over each other in their haste and fear. A calamitous din resounded throughout the station as people either stormed over to the exit or leapt into the train.
Only Sherlock and John remained after the stampede, and now their path to the train was clear. Just as the doors of the nearest car began to close, they jammed themselves through.
"Sherlock, that was illegal!" said an exasperated John, once the doors had closed behind them.
"That wasn't illegal," said Sherlock as the train started forward. "That was fun."