Chapter 6
She knew where she went wrong. She should have scoured the flat for evidence of Sherlock a lot sooner after he'd left for his mission. The longer you left it, the less you noticed things and soon they became part of the environment you ignored on a daily basis. If she'd cleansed her bedroom of all traces of Sherlock immediately after he'd left, Tom wouldn't have found the sweater in her bottom drawer.
What are you doing, going through my drawers? she'd yelled.
Why have you kept a man's sweater? he'd yelled back.
But they both knew this wasn't about a sweater.
She tested the cable ties on her wrists again. They seemed to be getting tighter, not looser. She felt strangely calm. Must be the drugs in her system. The stench of other people's body fluids filled her nostrils and she squirmed to avoid a patch of damp on the dishevelled bedclothes. One of those Indian print coverlets, frayed at the corners. There was no sheet and no pillow. The walls resembled those prefabricated huts they used in schools. Cheap, temporary, transportable. The only window, Perspex covered in a rusting wire mesh, looked out on yet another plasterboard wall. Dim light, a mixture of diffused winter sunset and fluorescent strip, told her she was in a building within a much bigger structure. She was hungry, so she must have been here for at least four hours. She filed away every detail. That's what they told you to do, wasn't it?
Rule number one of a hostage situation; remember as many details as you can. The human memory was unreliable, susceptible to misinformation and she was no exception. Retrieval enhanced suggestibility, they called it.
She'd decided to work backwards and unpick the story that brought her here. Not that understanding it would change anything. She would still be strapped to a filthy iron bedstead in a dank hovel. She'd lost her trousers and shoes somewhere along the way. It was freezing, and when she hitched her bare legs up as much as the cable ties would allow, she saw that her thighs were starting to turn blue and mottled from exposure. Mercifully, she still had the meager protection of her underwear.
Many rooms away, there was a scream followed by desperate, choked sobbing. She squeezed her eyes shut. There was nothing she could do to protect her ears from the horror of this hell hole so she went back to her analysis.
The cracks in their relationship had already started to appear well prior to the sweater argument. Tom constantly lied about where he was and who he was with. It was all part of his job, he'd protested. She'd attacked him with vague accusations of what she thought the paparazzi were capable of, how tabloid hacks had hounded people like Sherlock until they were forced to take their own lives. He wasn't like those people, he'd said, he was a legitimate journalist, he was trying for awards, reporting on real stuff, like social justice, the state of the nation.
And Sherlock wasn't dead after all, was he, and how often did he stay here, and when was the last time he stayed here, Molly? Tom's voice rang in her head. It was all a bit much really; this relationship lark wasn't all it cracked up to be.
Her dreams of settling down, trying for kids before she hit thirty five and proving everyone wrong by starting that often thought of, but never started PhD, were gradually being replaced by staying up late on the sofa, drinking too much cheap rosé and unsatisfying make-up sex. She wondered if being with Sherlock and all his instability might actually, after all, be preferable to the soul destroying, prosaic drama of her suburban decay. Was it Chekov who said, 'any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day to day life that wears you out,'?
Tom probably didn't even know she was gone. He'd seemed pretty determined when he left, muttering about checking up on a source. He'd be gone for days.
How she longed for the scent of that sweater now. It only came out of the drawer when she missed it's owner more than she could bear. She'd hold the soft grey lamb's wool to her cheek and inhale deeply of the lingering sandalwood, and wonder where he was at that particular moment in time. Then she'd fold it carefully and place it back in the drawer. That scent was fading now, after three long years, and sometimes she wondered if it was still representative of Sherlock at all, but she had the real thing back again, didn't she? Not that he'd let her get that close.
Tom thought she'd kept the sweater out of sentimentality, he didn't know about her little vice.
The sweater was the first mistake. The next thing she'd done wrong was to drink Barnett's benzodiazepine laced coffee. Oh, there he was now, followed by a man she hadn't seen before.
"That confirms it then," said Lestrade, taking notes. The CCTV footage from the Hospital Museum showed Molly bounding up the grand stair case and greeting Barnett. They bowed their heads in mute conversation for a few seconds and then turned, presumably, toward the café.
Sherlock looked up from his intense study of the computer screen. "Is it too warm in here?"
"We've just found conclusive proof that Barnett - the fake Barnett was the last person to see Molly and all you can think about is the air con?" Lestrade's voice was gravelly, condescending.
"A heater over the door blasts you when you enter the hall," Sherlock theorised, "The first thing you do is remove anything uncomfortably warm, hat, scarf…" he held up his own black leather gloves.
"But fake Barnett still has his gloves on." John scrutinised the grainy footage, as the assistant curator, an unfashionably bearded young man, rewound it for them.
"It could be nothing… It doesn't mean…" Lestrade began.
"It could well mean he thinks Molly is contaminated with something from the corpse." Sherlock completed the thought for him. He took out Molly's phone, which he'd already sealed in a sandwich bag, and made a note of some of the numbers through the plastic.
That could only mean he was planning on keeping it. This annoyed Lestrade no end. He held out his hand, beckoning with his fingers. "That's evidence now. Come on."
Sherlock reluctantly handed it over and Lestrade deposited it in one of his own evidence bags.
"In any case," Sherlock pretended not to be put out, "it does somewhat increase the urgency of the situation."
"Lay on the hyperbole, why don't you," said John.
"I'll take a copy of that," Lestrade told the curator.
"I trust you've followed all the official abduction procedures," Sherlock turned to Lestrade, putting his coat and scarf back on, "her handbag, usual haunts, financial records… the boyfriend." He said the word 'boyfriend' with unveiled contempt.
"Just let us do our job, Sherlock. You two try to keep out of trouble."
"Us, get in trouble?" John tipped his head toward Sherlock.
"It's what you do best." Yet Lestrade knew he'd issued them with more of a challenge than a directive to stay out of his investigation.
Sherlock was already out the door, coat flapping behind him like a cape."Allez vite!"
"I hate it when he does that," John glanced back.
"You're going to rape me." Molly had strained her neck painfully when she'd tried to lift her head to get a better look at her kidnappers. She dropped back down onto the bed, defeated by the laws of physics and the excoriating restraints. "I'm not just a piece of meat that you can pass around. I have feelings. I'm a person."
Rule number two of a hostage situation; It is psychologically harder for a person to kill, rape, or otherwise harm a captive if the captive remains 'human' in the captor's eyes.
The stranger circled the bed, slowly, observing her. "I assure you will not be sexually assaulted, Doctor Hooper." He had an accent she couldn't quite identify. Eastern European? Yugoslavian? His head was shaved and his face was clean shaven, revealing a deep cleft in his chin. What she first thought to be a dimple on his cheek turned out to be a deep puckered scar when he turned. His cold grey eyes bored into her. Why was he looking at her like that? What was he looking for? "For you the privilege of much higher destiny."
"It's Miss Hooper. It's a, uh, courtesy title they award to surgery fellows. Professionaly I'm known as 'Miss Molly Hooper'."
Soon to be Mrs Tomasz Kazimierz.
The man she knew as Lawrence Barnett slouched in the corner and lit up a cigarette with a cheap disposable lighter. Little bits of white plaster brushed off the wall onto his coat. He was the antithesis of the authoritarian she'd met earlier in the day, the dye had been washed out of his hair, revealing nicotine stained grey, and he now sported a green wind-cheater and jeans instead of the suit and tie.
"And you," she shot at him, "what's your part in all of this?"
The two men looked at each other, sharing a silent joke. "Oh, him," said the Yugoslavian, "he just actor, grifter. I suppose you call him intelligence officer."
"What did you think? Did you like the middle class inflection?" He slipped into his Barnett voice, "quite convincing, wasn't it? You know the NHS really needs to spend more on security. Key cards can open so many doors for a man like me."
The metaphysical kind of doors, not just the physical doors that keep the bogeyman out.
"You killed that girl, didn't you?"
"What girl?" said the actor.
"The girl with the scar. You cut her up, did God knows what to her, and then you killed her." Molly tried so hard not to let any fear creep into her voice, but it cracked a little at the end.
Finally the actor walked over to the bed and flicked ash over her semi naked body. He leaned down close enough to whisper, the reek of his cheese and onion sandwich and the cigarette thick on his breath. "By the time I was finished with her, she was begging for death."
"You shouldn't go poking around in other people business, Miss Hooper," said the Yugoslavian, "poking around gets you killed. Doctor or not, you cannot save self now."
Rule number three; cooperate with your captor. Don't make threats or become violent -
Oh, fuck it -
"You'll pay for this," she spat, somewhere deep inside she still had some sass to hold onto, "Sherlock Holmes is coming for you and he's going to make you suffer - argh!" She roared as she tried to kick him, over and over again, using up what little energy she had and falling back to the disgusting mattress exhausted and panting. The plastic ties were just too strong.
"I hope so, Miss," said the Yugoslavian with a smile as they both retreated out the door, "I sincerely hope so."
Now that they had gone, Molly was left alone with only the rising fear for company, breathing hard. A higher destiny, he'd said. What was she, bait? And then a further, more sickening idea swept over her. She resisted the overwhelming urge to diagnose herself. I'm an experiment. That's why they won't… touch me. They've poisoned me or given me a virus and they're waiting for me to die.
"Just let me kill her and get it over and done with." Wade dragged his nicotine yellow fingers through his greying shock of hair. "It's so much more elegant that way. No loose ends to tie up afterwards."
"No," said Jokic, "too valuable for you to play dolls."
"Whatever you say, boss," Wade whined in a joke American accent.
"Borjan," Jokic yelled, "you fuck up disposal today."
Two of Jokic's bodyguards dragged in the bloody and bruised Borjan.
"Where you find him?" Jokic asked the heavier of the two bodyguards.
"Cowering under the railway bridge in Richmond."
Wade went over to the locker and took out a sheet of polythene and a shotgun.
"You think you hide from me?" Jokic circled the cowering minion. "ME?"
Wade stubbed out his cigarette on the office wall. "May I?"
"Be my guest."
Wade spread out the plastic sheeting. It was almost like a ritual.
Borjan burst into tears. "Please, please, she deserved a proper burial."
"Why, did she give you an epic blow job? You like those don't you, Borjan?"
"She was my sister, you sick fuck." Borjan spat blood and snot.
"Patient zero was your sister?" said Wade, "shit."
"You find him," Jokic slapped Wade upside the back of his head. "You no check?"
"It's inevitable one of them's going to try and play hero."
Jokic turned away from him and circled the cowering young man. "So you dump sister in river. Now cops interfere. I think you overestimate compassion of cops."
The bodyguards dragged Borjan over to the plastic sheet and dumped him on his backside. He keeled over, too weak to resist. "Family," he snivelled, "fa - family is all we have."
"In business you have no family. Business more important than family. Here, Dario is sister," Jokic indicated the bodyguard to his left, "Rudolph is sister," he indicated the bodyguard on the right, who laughed.
"Who's your daddy, Borjan?" Wade stood over him.
"Only problem," said Jokic, examining his finger nails idly, "who cleans up when cleaner is dead?"
Borjan looked up at Wade with something like a prayer. "P - please don't kill me - "
"I'm not going to kill you," said Wade, cooly, "the swine'll do that - " and then he blasted the man's kneecaps away with two precise shots of the twelve guage.
The bodyguards picked up the corners of the plastic sheet and ferried the unconscious red mass that was Borjan off to the pigpen.
"Borjan sister in morgue, now?" Jokic accepted a cigarette from Wade.
"Presumably." Wade lit them both up.
"Which one?"
"I'm not going back there. They'll apprehend on sight now we've taken the girl."
"Hmmm," Jokic thought, taking a drag. "The contamination cannot be detected by hospital or police. We leave Borjan sister for now. New girl more important. The other girls die too quickly, this one more like accidental exposure, more accurate... analogue of what will happen to rest of population."