CHAPTER TWO

This case. An exact recreation of Celeste Paxton. Aside for one thing, the girl, Shaelee Birdie, was older. About fifteen years older. It seemed as though the victims aged as the murderer did.

Greg stumbled into the morgue at Bart's with his hands buried into his pockets, combing over the information in his brain, trying to see if he forgot anything.

By the time he looked up, he found himself nearly chest-to-chest with an old friend of his.

"Molly?" he said, as though surprised.

"Greg?" she echoed in the same tone.

"Molly."

"Greg." She repeated with a small smile playing on her lips.

He opened his mouth, as though about to say her name a third time, but then thought better of it. Instead, he said, "Haven't seen you in ages."

Molly blinked with a small shrug. "Oh…well…I've been…here."

Greg nodded, and then coughed. "Well, er, I'm here on business."

Of course I'm bloody here on business. Why else would I show up at the bloody morgue? Shit.

Molly nodded. "Do you need to see someone?"

Nodding again, Greg shifted his weight over his feet. "Yeah. Shaelee Birdie."

"Oh," Molly pulled the body out from the wall, unzipping the body-bag to the dead girl's shoulders.

"What did your autopsy show?"

Molly blinked, looking at her clipboard. "Er…well…cause of death, obviously, blood loss, from the slit throat. Uh…dangerous amounts of GHB in her system. Brain shows signs of seizures."

Greg nodded slowly, recalling the exact report from fifteen years ago. There had to be something else. Something he missed. "Anything else?"

"Well," She paused. Normally, she never thought about this sort of thing, other than when she typed them for the records. It tended to become a bit too much. "She's mutilated completely. Cuts, burns, lesions - you name it, she has it. And it looks like it all happened when…when she was still alive."

Greg continued nodding, a grim expression on his face.

"And," She said slowly, turning a bit pink. "If it means anything to you, er…it looks like she had sex shortly before dying."

Sighing, Greg continued, nodding. Identical to Paxton. "Yeah. Unfortunately it does mean something to me."

Molly still looked pink. "Well…erm…that's it on the autopsy. Other than the cuts in her throat, and the drugs, she looks as though she could've lived to be ninety."

Nothing new. Nothing for a lead. No suspects. Greg almost hung his head in defeat. Only, no, this time he wasn't accepting defeat. It was the same killer – it had to be. It all went unchanged, evading the police the same damn way. This time, the bastard wouldn't get away. Somehow, he was going to get caught.

As he turned to go, however, Molly called out again.

"Greg," She said. "Don't wait on a murder to stop by again, yeah?"

Greg pressed his lips together, and then smiled softly. "Yeah."

With this, he waved good-bye, and exited the morgue as quickly as possible.

Molly watched him go, and instantly felt a fool. Again.

About a year ago, Sherlock advised her against all attempts of a relationship in the future.

His ability to be right could never be matched.

Then again, it hadn't really been a relationship with Greg. Had it? She wasn't even sure they were friends. They used to email, almost daily. It started with him apologising for how rotten Sherlock was the Christmas before, and one reply led to another, and their correspondences leaked into double digit pages. From the other end of a computer screen, she'd been a sympathetic ear through his divorce, and he talked her through the anniversary of her father's death.

Actually, it was partway because of him that she gave up on Sherlock in the first place.

With a sigh, Molly zipped up Birdie's body bag and placed her back into the wall. Scrubbing her hands with soap and scalding water, she sighed and decided to journey to the upper floors to grab a bite for lunch.

Molly was never terribly fond of the upper floors. In the morgue, at the very least, everyone was already dead. No worrying about crying family members, no worry that someone may wind up dead. There was no suffering down below. The suffering was ex post facto.

She never dealt with people on her floors. That was one of the nice things about working with post-mortems. Not that she particularly enjoyed working with the deceased. It was a job. She did get lonely from it, especially within the last year. But it wasn't so bad. She didn't think about death more than the average person; it didn't help her philosophically. It was science, and purely medical, without any attachments. She managed to stay happy with it, anyhow.

But, in the hospital, with rooms filled with the suffering, diseased and hurt, it became very apparent. Even worse, so it seemed, boiled down to the faux hope everyone held over their heads – that maybe it would be their mum who survived cancer, or their grandfather who suddenly regained memory from Alzheimer's. And the fact that the hope was so hollow. Nobody actually believed it. Maybe that was the heartbreaking bit.

Life had been awfully heartbreaking, though, since Sherlock disappeared. Molly shook her head, thinking about the mess that all turned into. Being one of the only people who knew exactly what happened to him turned was rather exhausting. And, perhaps, more of a burden than believing the pretense of his death.

After all, it was positively horrid to hold that sort of knowledge over people who were suffering so badly. She wanted to tell them somehow, tell John and Mrs Hudson and Greg, that Sherlock was really all right. To end the tears and stop the suffering it brought on. Yet, she couldn't. For some God forsaken reason, Sherlock found it necessary to remain, for all intents and purposes, dead.

She felt responsible for her part in their mourning – and it felt awful. Yes, she realised she helped save their lives from Moriarty's assassins. Somehow, however, that never cut it; at least not to her own critical self-analysis.

So, shortly after Sherlock's pseudo-funeral, she proceeded to withdraw from any friends with links to Sherlock Holmes. She kept her head down when passing John in Bart's, avoided Baker Street for fear of running into Mrs Hudson, and never attempted to reply to any emails from Greg.

Once she completely deserted everyone who she knew through Sherlock, she soon found herself retreating even further. Though she hadn't realised at the time, she fled away from those to whom he was only a name in the newspaper. It was so much simpler, easier, to curl up under a blanket with her cat and watch telly than to go out with friends. She'd always been more of a home-body anyway. Having no friends only bound her more to her flat.

Yes, she missed people – living people. People to chat to. Still, she couldn't manage that. Somehow, she just couldn't.

Knowing the truth could be so brutal when others suffered because of the lie. Making herself suffer along with them seemed like a reasonable punishment.

She tried to stay happy, however. That was an important part of working in a morgue – the potential of depression screamed in one's face if one kept a rummy attitude. Without any nameable friends, she taught herself to knit, caught up on the last few series on the telly she'd missed, and started to catch up on sleep she'd missed back at university.

She waited in line at the cafeteria. Then menu looked like pasta or factory-manufactured burgers. She didn't really trust the meat at Bart's, but she was getting awfully tired of the pasta.

"'Ey!" A voice came from behind her. "Y'stepped in fron' o' me, then."

Molly turned around, feeling the bridge of her nose turn pink. "Oh. I'm sorry."

The owner of the voice, a gangly, stubbly sort of man, stepped back slightly, a skewed grin on his stubbly face. "Never mind. Y'must be workin' 'ard…Ms…Molly 'ooper."

Molly wrinkled her brow slightly, wondering how he knew her name, until she remembered she was still wearing her lab coat and nametag. Then she smiled. "Oh, thank you, but I don't…I really shouldn't skip in a line."

"No mat'er," The man said. "'t's 'ospital food, Ms 'ooper. I'm not really rushin' 't ge' it."

To this, Molly let a small laugh escape her lips. Feeling the line move in front of her, she began to move forward, and wound up smacking right into the man in front of her.

He turned around, glaring through green eyes.

Molly blanched. "Sorry."

The man looked her over once, making Molly shift uncomfortably.

Then he smiled with closed lips. "No problem," he said diplomatically.

The man from behind her, coughed slightly, and Molly turned back towards him.

"So…" he said. "Morgue a'endant?"

Molly shrugged. "Pays the rent."

"Kind of anti-social, though."

Shaking her head, Molly said, "It's quiet, but I do get out some."

"Care 't prove it 't me?"

Without thinking, Molly let out a sudden laugh. Then, when she quieted herself, she realised she reached the front of the line.

"Why not?" She recited her mobile number for him, and then turned to get her lunch. "Oh, and what did you say your name was?"

"Billy," He said, "Billy Morrison."

According to her file, Shaelee Birdie worked in the London Library. Thus, Greg's investigation started there. The head of the library loaned him an office to conduct investigations, a big spacious area with mahogany tables and desks, velvet curtains with golden trim, and a full fur rug in the centre.

At first, he questioned a few librarians. Most of them said they'd never even seen Shaelee Birdie before ("Different shifts, you know?") or that they hadn't seen anything confusing or off about her before she died.

"One of those people," the librarians seemed to echo one after another, "who just melt into the bookshelves."

Towards the end of the day, they managed to question every librarian, but only one gave any sort of insight. Her name: Maryann Thompsen. A few years younger than Birdie, she seemed confused when she was called, but opened sympathetically.

"This must be about Shaelee, isn't it?" Maryann said through a thick Scottish accent. "Bloody hell, I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the telly."

"You knew her well, then?" Greg asked.

"Oh, no. Sorry." Maryann looked at her hands. "I don't think anybody knew her well. She was…quiet, you know? Disconnected. Lonely. Don't know much about her other than her name."

Greg frowned, jotting that down. That's almost exactly what Celeste Paxton's roommate said about her. "Do you know of any connections she had?"

Maryann thought on it, and shook her head ultimately. "Sorry. None that I know of."

Nodding, Greg gestured out the door. "All right. Thank you for your time, Ms Thompsen."

"There is one thing though," Maryann said, without moving. "For the past month, there's been this man walking her out every night. She wouldn't leave without him."

"Boyfriend?" Greg asked, looking more at Donovan than at Maryann Thompsen.

"Don't think so," Maryann said quickly. "I mean, I've been wrong before, but he seemed – well – gay as a picnic basket. Huge bloke, though. Looked like he could've been a bouncer in a pub, or something."

"Hm," Greg considered this. Then, he nodded to Maryann. "Do you know his name?"

Maryann seemed to think. "Jacob or Jason or something. Webber or Wilkes or Wilson, for the surname I think."

"Thank you. That was very helpful."

"No problem, Detective Inspector," Maryann said, smiling. She stood to leave, but then turned on herself. "You know, when I was asked to come in here for a questioning, I was expecting some old fat bloke with owl-glasses. I have to say this was a vast improvement."

To this, Greg coughed slightly, as Donovan escorted Maryann Thompsen from the room. Once the librarian left, the sergeant turned back to her boss.

"She seems off. It's possible could be her, you think?"

Greg shook his head.

"Oh, come on. Don't let your ego getting stroked affect – "

"No, it's not that." Greg snapped, wondering exactly how unprofessional Donovan thought he was. If anything that did make Thompsen suspicious. "Shaelee had semen found on her. We're looking for a man."

"Could've been a boyfriend, and Thompsen could've helped."

Greg paused. "Won't hurt to look into it. Meanwhile I think we should look into this bloke who walked Shaelee Birdie home every night."

The man's real name, as it turned out, was George Willis. It took about a night to find him. He lived in East London, and as it turned out, was a private detective, living in a shabby house, about twenty minutes outside the city.

Willis let Greg in on a heartbeat, large hands trembling, leading him into a slight excuse for an office: a glass desk, a bookshelf, and a small sofa, but appeared to be rather unkempt.

It all seemed a bit unprofessional for a private detective. Greg seriously doubted this would be the sort of man he'd trust his own life with. So why had Birdie?

"Obviously, Detective Inspector," Willis said, sitting down at his desk, "I'd been hoping you wouldn't be necessary with this whole tragedy. Hoping I could've handled it."

Greg nodded. "Could you tell us how it all went awry?"

Willis shrugged his shoulders and stared at his fingernails. "Wish I knew," he said, "I went to walk her to the library one morning, and she was gone. She didn't want me sleeping over at her place, so I'd go pick her up in the mornings, you know So there were those few hours where I wouldn't be there. But I have surveillance."

"Can we see it?" Donovan intervened.

Willis nodded slowly, reaching into his desk, and pulling out a home-burned DVD. Then, with his hand still in the drawer, he pulled out a thick manila folder. "Here's everything I got on her."

Donovan took them into her hands.

Greg stared at Willis. "Did the surveillance show anything before she went missing?"

Willis shook his head. "The DVD freezes between two and three in the morning. By that time, she was gone. She might've turned it off. She had a nasty habit of doing that, for whatever reason."

"And what did she say when she hired you?"

"Same thing everyone says, I suppose," Willis said, looking up at the older detective. "She wanted me to keep an eye on her – figure out who was following her and sending her emails."

"Did you?"

"I would've turned him to you boys had I found it," Willis said, shaking his head, then he turned slightly green and said to Donovan, "Boys being a broad term, o'course."

Donovan simply lifted her brows, but continued staring through the Private Detective.

"Any leads?"

Willis shook his head. "Afraid not. Damn elusive, that one."

"Not to sound – rude – or anything," Greg said slowly. "But is there a finite reason she opted for a private inspector over the police."

A twinkle grew in Willis's eyes. "A few years ago, she was a link to a drug bust in a prostitution ring. Wasn't terribly keen on that part of her past coming up – or prosecution on it anyways."

Greg nodded slowly and began to stand. "Well, I think we've heard enough. Thank you, Mr Willis. We'll be in touch."

Upon returning to Scotland Yard, it was already nearing midnight. Greg stared at the file, still unopened on the desk. Anderson checked for fingerprints and saliva, and upon only finding Willis's returned it to Greg for examination.

With a sigh, he opened the folder. The front page seemed standard for such things, a Polaroid of the victim from when she was still very alive, a hand-written note of the complaint, and across the top SHAELEE KINNA BIRDIE typed hastily and blurred onto the opposite side of the folder.

Greg picked up the note of complaint, and, putting it under his office light, began to read. The standard complaint of stalking. Setting his brow, he chewed on a pen. Why would Shaelee Birdie invest in a private detective to help her, when the police would be more effective?

Perhaps, Greg thought in a moment, seeing a metaphorical light bulb illuminate in his skull. She was afraid to involve the police or court system. Making a note to check if she had any sort of criminal history they might have missed, Greg continued to look over the file.

The second page was a log of happenings.

10 January 2012 – emails began.

15 July 2012 – emails become more pressing – seem to evoke a fictional relationship between client and stalker.

30 January 2013 – stalker begins to text her – untraceable phone (disposable).

12 February 2013 – emails become desperate and threatening.

24 February 2013 – constant watch over client. Stalker has begun to phone her and send photographs.

4 March 2013 – client has gone missing.

Behind that laid logs of her spending, receipts, and tickets from the past year. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Thus, with a sigh, Greg returned the file to the rest of the evidence, and shrugging on a jacket, headed out into the late night air.

Molly just settled into what she interpreted as an ideal evening. With a warm blanket draped around her shoulders and a warm cup of tea in her hands, her new MacBook open to her blog, fuzzy faces of adorable kittens staring back at her.

She hadn't written in her stupid blog in a year. It seemed as though everything on it involved Jim—Moriarty. They met through it, after all, him logging on and asking if she was the "one with the nose" who worked in the morgue. He was probably the only one who even bothered to read it. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

Still, a small, nagging part of her wanted to continue blogging. She started for a reason, after all. To give her a place to put her thoughts, if anyone cared enough to check. She sighed and put her fingers on the keyboard.

O.K, she typed. I know I said I wouldn't update anymore. But

She furrowed her brows, taking a hasty sip of tea, watching the cursor blink back at her. Taunting her. She knew she wanted to say something, but she didn't know what to say. But, what? Now that she recovered from Ji—Moriarty and she knew what really became of Sherlock, she wanted to start blogging again? How stupid did that sound?

Sighing audibly, causing her cat to run to a randomly selected other room, she let her head flu backwards, hitting the wall behind her.

That brief exchange in Bart's cafeteria – with that Billy bloke – hadn't added up to much. He'd never texted, actually. That couldn't be blamed. Hospitals aren't exactly a good place to find dates – if that's even what he wanted. Molly held serious doubts that anybody would want her – and really want her. Not just to get to someone else. Not just to help them slip under any sort of radar. Not just for sex. But the kind of thing she had thought of when she was a little girl, watching Disney movies on Saturday nights. She wasn't even sure that's what she wanted – everything just made it all so confusing.

"What do I even want?" She sighed out, to nobody in particular.

As though a response, a swooping sound came through the speakers on her laptop. An email alert.

Picking her head up abruptly, Molly sat her cup down on a coaster, bringing up a new tab to her email.

To her surprise, several unread emails popped up. Some forwarded chain letter her Mum sent (Delete), a request on Farmville (Delete). Something from an alias she didn't recognize, figuring it some sort of scam, she sent it promptly to the bin, as well as any emails like it. The last, she had to do a double take, make sure she wasn't just daydreaming. Surely enough, there it was. Greg Lestrade.

She clicked to open the mail.

Molly- My niece sent this to me. Thought of you.

Molly grinned, and found the attachment to the bottom of the window. Upon opening said attachment, was a photograph of the single most adorable sleeping calico kitten she'd ever seen, with its tiny pink nose and long whiskers standing up.

She hit the reply, and quickly began typing. Thanks, Greg. That was sweet. - Molly. XxxxxX

And then, just like that, she hit "Send."

For some reason, for the rest of the night, she couldn't wipe the grin off her face.

To clarify a few things, Greg reminded himself whilst staring at his email inbox. He did not fancy Molly Hooper. Sure, he liked her well enough. And, if he was to be completely honest, thought she was well fit, but that wasn't the point.

The point itself remained shrouded in ambiguity. He couldn't really draw the conclusion himself. He'd come to count on her emails, a high point in the day, where topics ranged from serious day-to-day problems, to trivial facts and jokes. Then, they'd stopped. He couldn't think of anything he'd done to upset her, so she must've found a better way to spend her time. It had hurt a bit, for some unknown reason, but it wasn't much of a stretch to the imagination to realise that Molly had better people to spend time with and more important things to do.

The important part, however, remained in the facts: he didn't fancy her. He just had to remember that little detail. He cocked up romantic relationships, and Molly didn't need a cock-up. Not that she'd even want him. She deserved someone who could give her more – and do it better.

No fancying done on his part. No, sir. It wasn't as though, when he retired for the night and managed to clear away all thoughts of the crime scene and Shaelee Birdie, he started to think about that visit to the morgue. And Molly. And – fuck it. He wasn't going to think about this. He wasn't.

Focus, Greg, he thought, swiping through his fringe.

Where to go now? Birdie's workplace hadn't helped at all. He ought to backtrack, he realised, and have a look in her flat. Just because there was nothing in the dormitory for the original case didn't mean there wouldn't be this time. Sherlock once said, killers always make a mistake.

Soon Greg found himself in the car again, driving down alleyways he'd never know of had he not entered this profession.

It only took a few minutes in the cold car with Donovan in the passenger's seat, until they came pulling up to a small, rather dodgy-looking, flat building. Climbing to the door, they rang the doorbell. Shortly afterward, the landlord sleepily pushed the door open in ratty pyjamas. With a quick show of identification, the keys to Birdie's flat wound up pressed into Greg's hands, and he pushed the door open.

Shaelee Birdie's flat was rather plain. It looked almost like a man's flat, no pictures or girlish décor graced the walls, the curtains were plain and black. The walls were white and dirty with black handprints. There was a shockingly small telly on a rickety tray, a moth-eaten sofa shoved into the corner, and the carpet thinned, nearly worn through.

"Look," Donovan said. "There's dust on everything. She must've been away for a while."

Greg nodded, "Yeah…write that down, Sally."

In the next room, a small fridge hummed, and a gas stove loomed in another corner. A small kitchen table, with a single chair.

Wandering around the plain room, they looked inside the fridge. A loaf of bread, and assorted vegetables lay out in a rather colourful spectrum.

In the adjoining room, the shower curtains laid hastily on the ground, pulled from the rod, but there were no other signs of a struggle. Spit patterns stained the mirror, and Greg allowed one corner of his mouth turn up, thinking about what Sherlock would have said had he been there. Just from that, he might've been able to tell exactly how Birdie was taken, and maybe even where and who took her.

The only other room in the flat, turned out to be her bedroom. A neatly made bed, a plain, thin, blue bedspread. Perfumes sat, arranged in some kind of pattern on the dresser over a small vanity table. There were several large piles of books in the corner, reaching up about a meter.

"Hey, Greg?" Donovan called, standing with the closet door wide open. "I think this could be important."

Greg walked over. At first, the closet looked completely average. A few bland, beige shirts and skirts hung up neatly, a few wrinkles betraying the fabric. Inside, he saw about five pairs of shoes hanging up over the door. As his eyes fell to the bottom, however, he saw what Sally meant.

"Didn't they already take that?"

"They took hers." Donovan sent him a meaningful glance.

There, on the bottom of the closet, laid a jet-black laptop.