Chapter Five
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/2013 Fri 14:32
How much?
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/2013 Fri 14:33
Yeah, I know, cray isn't it?
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 14:34
*craay* oh fuck off (not you mary, stupid big man thumbs) *crazy*
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 14:34
Take it.
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 14:35
No way. He's trying to emasculate me.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 14:36
If Sherlock wanted to emasculate you, I'm sure he'd find a better way.
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:08
Five figs, Mary. Always strings attached to figs of 5 and over.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:09
He doesn't see money that way. Don't you know that by now? Favours are his currency.
MESSAGE - SHERLOCK HOLMES - 11/10/13 Fri 16:09
Mary, would you mind telling John to stop standing in the corner, get off his phone and help with the search?
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:10
Certainly Sherlock. May I ask what you are looking for?
MESSAGE - SHERLOCK HOLMES - 11/10/13 Fri 16:10
Not what, Mary, Who. Molly Hooper is missing.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:10
John, get off the phone and help Sherlock look for Molly.
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:10
Probably won't be home for dinner.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Why didn't you tell me this before texting me about the money?
MESSAGE - SHERLOCK HOLMES - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Mary, are you aware that you just sent that to me?
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Oops. Don't listen to John. He's an idiot.
MESSAGE - SHERLOCK HOLMES - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Agreed.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Is there anyhting I can do to help?
MESSAGE - SHERLOCK HOLMES - 11/10/13 Fri 16:11
Nope.
MESSAGE - JOHN WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:12
Have to go, Sherlock making move towards door. Love you.
MESSAGE - MARY WATSON - 11/10/13 Fri 16:12
Hope Molly okay. Not like her. Let me know if I can help. Getting sick of pregnancy magazines.
All the usual police procedures had proved unfruitful so far. Lestrade had sent uniforms to her flat. Hospital security had passed around her photo. Security footage was either insufficient or inconclusive. Sherlock had already interrogated Mike until the poor man's head was spinning. They'd checked the diary in her office for appointments and followed up every viable lead. No-one had been in and out of the morgue except Molly, Caroline, two technicians and Mike himself, and they'd all checked out. Furthermore, because he was new, no-one could tell them anything about Lawrence Barnett. Lestrade was already busy tracking down the head of human resources.
Sherlock burst through the back gates onto Giltspur Street with John hot on his heels. He instantly analysed the single storey ambulance station in front of him, the red phone box, the wooden benches. A renovation company's white van was parked in one of the spaces reserved for paramedics. "It's likely they initially took the body away in an ambulance. They come and go constantly. They would've had an ideal window between eleven and twelve o'clock." What he didn't iterate was, of course, that they took it while Molly was at Baker Street, probably waiting for the moment she left for her lunch break, and that if he hadn't summoned her, the course of the day's events would have panned out a lot differently. He would not allow himself to consider the possibility that, in any one of the myriad scenarios his brain had calculated, he was to blame. It was much better to focus on finding her. "It's conceivable that they took Molly away by ambulance too."
They were out on the pavement now, turning around and around to get their bearings, or a clue.
Any clue.
Anything.
"It's also conceivable that they ran away together. Did you think of that?" John squinted against the low October sun. He watched Sherlock, stern with concentration, nose wrinkling in the crisp, cold, 'fresh' air, discerning everything from the saturated fat content of the builder's lunch to the illegally high carbon emissions of the passing Mercedes.
"I've narrowed it down to three possibilities. One, Barnett took Molly. Two, Molly took Barnett and she's in reality the mastermind of this whole operation. Three, a coincidence and you know I don't believe in coincidences, John. John… JOHN!"
John had come to a standstill while he was talking and was staring at him, swallowing thickly, with an unidentifiable expression.
Yes, what was that expression? Sherlock's catalogue of facial cues was failing him. "What is it?"
John recovered enough to say, "Look where you are standing."
Sherlock looked down at his feet. "Oh." He was standing in the exact same place where he lay down and pretended to be dead three long years ago. Somehow both of them expected there to some kind of mark there, anything that would testify as to what happened that fateful day, but it was nothing but workaday, hard, grey pavement, spotted with the usual lichen and gum. Thousands of feet had passed over the spot without a thought to how that concrete had changed so many people's lives. If there had ever been any memorial flowers left by Sherlock's followers, they were long gone, and only tiny traces of organic matter lingered near the wall of Dominion House.
Sherlock stepped back slowly, almost reverently, a concession he told himself he was allowing John, but really it was too much like walking over his own grave.
They pushed back through the gates marked.
In the courtyard, Sherlock frantically cast around for signs of a struggle, torn clothing, even blood, the tiny little inconsistencies that ordinary people never noticed.
Thinking back to their lunchtime conversation, he was willing to admit now that his little experiment had backfired. His timing was awful; if he'd known then that she'd had a fight with Tom he would never have texted her. Maybe her defenses were already low. Maybe it had been a little too intimate, he could see that now. He'd dared to let her see a sliver of his vulnerability to see how she'd react, see how she'd cope with the truth when it was laid out in front of her, undeniable. He was human, he was fallible, and for all she knew, he was dangerous. Maybe should have started with something smaller, not so... so... personal. One thing was certain though; no good could come of these experimental little forays into the maze mere mortals labelled 'emotion'.
He'd shouted at her. The memory made him wince even now.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Ordinary-Sherlock. That's what ordinary people do; shout at each other when they don't know how to process their emotions. That couldn't be the last conversation they ever had. He wouldn't let it be the last conversation they ever had. He shook the idea out of his head. He needed to stay focused if they were going to solve this; couldn't afford to get emotionally involved. He told himself she was just another client. A faceless Jane Doe in the mortuary.
"Molly's smart," John kicked the dust around under the maple tree, morose, "if she knew she was going to be taken, she'd leave a clue."
"Yes, she would," Sherlock licked his lips thoughtfully. Molly was definitely the type to solve her own abduction. His mind flashed back to the memory of her poring over his supposedly dead body, taking notes, making it authentic. Catastrophic head trauma, resuscitation unsuccessful. In his daydream they swapped places and she was the one on the slab and he was the one taking notes. He banished the image… Not now! "Clever girl. Breadcrumbs," he took out his phone.
What happened next surprised them both. For entirely different reasons. Sherlock was a little surprised that it worked; it was a long shot. John was surprised that her choice of ring tone for Sherlock was 'Build Me Up Buttercup' by the Foundations. The irony was totally lost on Sherlock, he noted. Nevertheless, the phone was ringing and it was coming from the row of wheelie bins outside the mortuary fire exit.
The two men exchanged a look that said please-God-no.
John flung open the lid of the first one and hoisted himself up for a better look before it stopped ringing. "Shit, I'm going to have to get in."
But Sherlock had already ducked underneath and was bringing up the still ringing handset. The password was a no-brainer. He had a quick flick through the messages as John straightened himself out again.
I WANT TO APOLOGISE FOR EARLIER. WILL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING. COFFEE? MEET ME UNDER THE POOL OF BETHESDA. BARNETT
"The pool of Bethesda?"
John was reading it upside down, pleased he knew something Sherlock didn't. "It's a painting in Bart's museum."
Far away across the city, in a suburb of Ruislip, uniformed police officers knocked on the door of Lawrence Barnett's recently rented mock-Tudor semi. Not receiving an answer, PC Dale Lees of the Metropolitan Police Force peered through the letterbox and caught a glimpse of his first suicide.