Chapter 13

"David, so glad you're in." Mary barged past him into the farmhouse with a large overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

"Sherlock's going to kill me," David muttered through his confusion.

"Oh, don't worry about that. He's a pussy cat. I can manage him."

"He knows where I live." There was genuine fear on the man's face.

"Aw, bless you," Mary patted his shoulder, "have you still got that bomb shelter? Haven't filled it in?"

"No," David hung on the still open farmhouse door, "no filling in or anything like that-"

"Is it still fully stocked?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Might come in handy, that's all."

"Can I assume something's up between you and John?"

"Of course not. Give a girl a chance to get through the door." She dumped her bag on the kitchen counter, leaned over and switched on the red DAB radio, tuning it in to BBC 2.

"-are asking anyone who believes they've been in contact with anyone who's already been contaminated, or have frequented any of the premises listed on the website, to call the hotline immediately and they will be assessed over the phone."

David's mouth opened in consideration, as the reporter handed over to the regular presenter.

"Thanks Hannah. The most important thing for people to remember is not to panic, but to seek help over the phone. Do not, I repeat, do not go to your local A and E, they won't be able to treat you there. I cannot stress this enough; stay in your home and call the hotline, if you believe you've been contaminated. Now, we go over to our correspondent at the Health Department where the Health Minister has some words on how this is going to affect the UK's already strained emergency resou-"

"Oh, shit, I never thought this would actually happen," said David, blanching.

"It's on every channel." Mary started to make herself at home, opening the cupboards and looking for coffee.

"So you're gonna sit this out… here? What about John."

"Oh, he's off trying to save the world, as usual. By the way, I'll need all your apocalypse stuff. Got to come up with a survival plan, you know," and she crinkled her eyes at him, "just in case."

"You know your brother's watching us right?" John caught up with Sherlock as he was just turning into Park Lane. Trees flanked them on either side and a few cyclists passed, pedaling languidly.

"Of course. He wouldn't be so stupid as to let us loose in the city and not tail us." Sherlock just carried right on without even a flicker of annoyance on his stony face.

"Where are we going?" John admirably struggled to keep up with Sherlock's stride. He had to take about six steps for every five of Sherlock's just to keep in pace with the man.

Sherlock marched through Hyde Park as fast as a person could without having to break into a trot. "We're paying a visit to the diaspora." He tied his scarf more efficiently around his neck as they walked. "Our best lead is the poppy girl."

"How is traipsing through Hyde Park going to help? Is she homeless?"

"I think she's one of Maupertuis Junior's messengers. He probably has a network of them."

"Wait, he has his own homeless network?"

"I have an idea where she might be. It's either that or the restaurant."

"Restaurant?"

"The cuts on the backs of her fingers. The lingering aroma of onions, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Tell me you noticed that." Sherlock took his eyes off his destination long enough to give John a visual scolding.

"Well, no… she was only there for a second-"

"We know she worked in a Mediterranean restaurant," Sherlock continued purposefully, "trouble is, we don't have time to visit every restaurant in central London that fits the profile, so we'll have to go with the Romanian theory."

"That word she said-"

"Was 'please' in Romanian. Vă rog. Why would she say 'please' unless she was in some kind of trouble?"

"So if we find her, or someone who knows her, she could lead us to Maupertuis?" John quickened his step slightly as they neared the other side of the park. "There's just one thing that bothers me about this, Sherlock. If the poppies were a message, then this guy who's trying to discredit you must be desperate for you to follow him down the rabbit hole."

"Yes of course, it's a trap."

"So what are we going to do?"

Sherlock paused, momentarily losing the momentum of his stride and making John stop abruptly. "The only thing we can, realistically, do at this point; walk right into it."

When they came upon Marble Arch, John remarked how much it had changed since he'd been here last. About one hundred Roma littered the car park and grassed areas, making the landmark look more like a refugee camp. Old men, young men, women with headscarves, a plethora of suitcases… piles of abandoned clothes and rubbish. Fast-food wrappers.

Sherlock wasn't at all phased by the discovery of an entire Romanian village in the middle of Marylebone. "I'll look here, you go over there."

John crossed the road and began to search among the crowd, carefully checking the clothes and faces of anyone who was sleeping on the ground. A few people tried to beg from him. An old woman, her face deeply lined from worry and working the land, held her hands out to him. Her clouded eyes were the only communication she made. A man on a box was preaching up a storm over at Speaker's Corner, surrounded by a few hecklers, but mostly ignored.

He didn't have time for this.

There was no sign of the red body-warmer the poppy girl had worn. There was no sign of her either. John had learned to memorise faces years ago. That was how it was, walking with the great Sherlock Holmes; you never knew when you'd need to give a description to the police. You tried to memorise everything like he did, and then you started to think like him too. This habit had carried on long after Sherlock was thought to be dead. He changed the way you looked at the world. No one could come near him without being irreparably scorched. It was like looking directly at the sun.

John made his way back over to Sherlock, feeling resigned. Time was running out for Molly. If Sherlock was right, then she wasn't contaminated but that didn't mean her captor wouldn't get fed up with their tardiness and started cutting things off. Or worse. They needed a lead soon.

When he got back to the grassy bank near the car park, Sherlock was sitting with two young Roma men and their short-skirted girlfriends. He looked quite at home as they spoke to each other in Romanian.

"Ah, John. This is Max and Vasil. They were just telling me how the cops keep on hassling them, even though they definitely are not all thieves."

"Nice to meet you." John tried to take it in his stride that Sherlock had been here five minutes and now he was 'bezzie mates' with these guys and apparently spoke Romanian.

Max, the good-looking one, was out of place in his parka and jeans. A Dolce sweater poked out from underneath the jacket. Begging must be profitable. All of a sudden, John didn't feel too bad about not helping the old woman.

The two pretty girls talked conspiratorially off to the side as John sat down on the grass beside Sherlock. "She's not here," he said.

The others resumed their conversation in English for John's benefit.

"If you do not pay, the Seful will always find you," said Max, "they have eyes and ears everywhere." As if to punctuate the point he looked around at several well-dressed men smoking in a corner of the car park. The aroma of their cigarettes drifted over like incense. Unfortunately their words did not.

Sherlock turned to John to explain, "they pay over a thousand euros for passage here, and when they arrive, they end up working for five years just to pay it off."

"Your friend, I think, didn't pay," said Vasil, helpfully.

"Is there a name?" Sherlock looked him up and down. "Anything that might lead us to this money-lender. It's a matter of life and death."

The two young men remained frustratingly mute.

Finally Max spoke up, after slurping at the straw of a melted McFlurry he'd been nursing, "I don't know, they only deal through certain people."

It was hard to tell if these guys were honest or if they were protecting someone. Who knew? Maybe they were involved.

"Say I wanted to do business with one of them," Sherlock changed tone, "how would I go about that?"

"You need money?" asked Max.

"You want girl?" asked Vasil.

"No," Sherlock blinked, "I might have a business proposition for them, that's all."

"If you want to buy girl," said Vasil, lowering his voice, "you have to talk to elders over there."

John felt queasy at their objectionable suggestions. He scanned the dark cityscape as Sherlock negotiated with the young Roma. He wasn't sure he'd find any answers there either.

"Okay, well, thank you for your time." Sherlock levered himself off the ground, getting ready to leave when John grabbed a handful of his sleeve.

"Sherlock-" John couldn't take his eyes off the triumphal arch.

"What?"

"Look." John released his sleeve, realising what he was doing and pointed over to the monument.

"Amelia Hubbard?" Sherlock's brow furrowed, "what's she doing here?"

John could almost see the cogs turning inside the man's skull. "I don't know, but she's spotted us."

Amelia looked like a deer in the headlights as the two men gave chase, and a car honked its horn impatiently as they pursued her across the road toward Oxford Street.

She wasn't fast enough. John caught her first and clapped a hand on her shoulder. She was panting, fatigued, almost… relieved. She wheeled around, revealing her sickly pallour.

"Why were you following us?" John barked.

"John! Get your hands off her. She may be contaminated."

"Contaminated?" The girl landed on her bottom in a doorway as John released her.

"And she's not following us," Sherlock continued, out of breath, "we were all looking for the same person; it stands to reason we would cross paths."

John crouched down, hands splayed out to calm her, worried that passers-by might see, might think... "Now, look here. We're not going to hurt you. We just want to ask you a few questions."

"What did you mean, 'I hope you're happy together,'?" Amelia squinted up at Sherlock, her voice escalating into that whine girls often seemed to do when they were upset.

Sherlock stood stock still, fists clenched by his sides. "You were sleeping with Jennifer's boyfriend, weren't you?"

"Wha- Sherlock, what has she got to do with all this?"

But Sherlock just sneered aggressively, spinning round on the invisible enemy of his own negligence. If he could have strangled the thin air with those great paws, he would have. "I made a mistake, John. Jennifer didn't die of mercury poisoning."

"What?"

The question was also on Amelia's lips as she looked up at them from the doorway.

"She may have consumed mercury. I'd be willing to wager it was enough to have killed her eventually, but no. It was the polonium that killed her. I can see the pattern now. The heavy metals just exacerbated her condition. I expect her erratic behaviour extended much further than frantically brushing her hair, didn't it Amelia?"

Amelia looked down at the ground, unconsciously stroking her pig-tails. A large tear fell from her cheek and plinked onto the ground at their feet. "At first - at first we just thought she was paranoid. Then we thought she might be on to us… you know. Borjan had been disappearing a lot, when he wasn't with me, that is. Then a few days ago, she stopped going to work, started doing some pretty crazy things – um, pulling her hair out, screaming at us that we were sent by the devil to poison her…" At this point Amelia gave herself permission to have a little sob. She pulled on her own hair ever more desperately. "It was scary. I mean, we were scared. But then Borjan came home yesterday morning and he was white as a sheet. He said yes, the devil was poisoning them. I mean, I just couldn't believe that, right? It was stupid. We got into a fight, about what he was doing, the people he was mixed up with. I think Jennifer overheard us but she didn't make a sound or come out of her room. And then... and then, you know what happened. The police are still looking for Borjan, but I thought I'd know where to find him. I didn't tell them what I thought he was doing. Mr Holmes, I think he's in trouble. I think we're all in trouble."

Amelia took her glassy eyes off the two men and looked down at her hands. She held handfuls of long, silky brown hairs from her plaits. She took in air sharply, horrified, "am I going to die?"

"Most probably, yes," Sherlock told her matter-of-factly.

"Sherlock," John turned on him, warning him through gritted teeth, then he turned back to Amelia, reassuring her, "you're not going to die. Not if we can help it."

"Well," Sherlock retracted, "we're all going to die eventually. Just some quicker than others."

"Why don't you test her with your McGuyver thing and then we'll know for sure."

"It's not on her hands, John. She was with this Borjan fellow before he went missing."

"But how-" and then the penny dropped, "Oh. I see. I suppose she must have consumed…"

Amelia's hand went involuntarily to her mouth, shame on her plain face.

"Imbecile," Sherlock muttered to himself, "If only I'd seen it this afternoon, we could have saved so much time."

"You weren't to know," John watched him from the pavement, "But she'll need treatment now… we have to get her to the HPA."

"Fine." Sherlock's face was grim. "But first she's going to tell us who exactly Borjan is and what he got himself mixed up in."

Amelia looked up at them, now completely beside herself. "Borjan's boss… He has a farm out in the sticks where all the migrant workers go. He farms them out to anyone who will pay. It's completely illegal of course. But that's not all he does. People go there to… go there to… They call him 'Daddy'. People say… he's the devil incarnate, that he'll skin you alive if you cross him, and they believe it too. It keeps them all in line. Borjan… he said, all the other bosses, even the ones back home in Romania, are scared of him."

Sherlock took out his replacement Moleskine and pencil, with a hungry look in his eyes. "Address," he snapped.

John had never seen the man bound up the stairs and burst into the flat so militantly. He stood watching as Sherlock headed for the kitchen table, stuffing their homemade grenades into a black rucksack that John hadn't seen before.

The poppies drooped and dropped petals on the coffee table.

"I think we need to talk this through, before you... before you do anything rash."

"When have I ever done anything rashly?" But when John didn't answer, he said, "don't look at me like that."

"Just trying to 'keep you right'."

Sherlock pushed past him to fetch something from the living room. "I know exactly what I'm doing, John. This is war."

John considered that for a moment as Sherlock continued to search through the papers on his desk. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"I've dealt with people like him before. God knows, I might have actually dealt with him before and not realised it. I never got an ID. Damn! Where is it?"

For John it began to sink in, just what it might have been that Sherlock had been doing all the time he was away. He would have made a bloody good soldier... if he could learn to take orders, that is.

Sherlock victoriously brought up a monogrammed lighter from underneath the desk. "Ha!"

"So this guy, Maupertuis Junior," John studied him carefully, "he's moved heaven and earth to get you to come to him, but why didn't he just come here and shoot you if he wanted revenge. It's not like the address is a secret."

"It's not their style. It's part of the game. Why simply shoot someone in the head and leave evidence and witnesses, risking prison, when you have the power and the resources to set up an intricate cat and mouse game implicating your enemy beyond any reasonable doubt?"

"They?"

"Fortunately for us, the criminal element, psychopaths, true psychopaths are usually mentally deficient in some way. They will slip up somewhere. Human error, John, always human error."

"So we're just going to walk into the trap, find Molly, capture a Serbian warlord and foil a bomb plot? Simples. I'd better bring a weapon then."

"No guns," Sherlock said, brusquely, "that'll just make us a target for the police."

"But breaking into this farmhouse full of Serbian gangsters without any protection besides a couple of th-"

"Hopefully we won't need weapons if I get the timing right."

"Anyway, won't your grenades make us a target for the police?"

"Incendiary devices aren't actually illegal."

"You'd better bloody be right about this."

"Did you check in with your wife?" Sherlock shouldered the backpack. "Good. I have one more call to make before we head off." He flipped his phone over a couple of times. He paused briefly before dialing the second number he'd retrieved from Molly's Nokia, his thumb hovering over the name. Then he took the plunge.

"Who?"

"Back-up."