CHAPTER 5: ROCK-A-BYE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2015

Lestrade called an entire day later to confirm the identity of the victim: thirty-nine-year-old Sam Leonard Jefferies of Hackney, former RAMC combat medical technician. According to his family, he had not adjusted well to civilian life upon his return from Afghanistan. He had worked as a paramedic but was sacked after a short six months after he refused to treat an injured Muslim and refused sensitivity training and other psychological counselling. Having snubbed all offers of help from family and friends, Jefferies was soon unable to pay rent, which landed him on the streets where he had been for more than three years.

'And the assailant?' said Sherlock into the phone.

A controlled sigh. 'Inconclusive. The swimming pool stuff—'

'Sodium hypochlorite.'

'Yeah, that. It did its job. Any possible DNA evidence leftover from bodily fluids has been destroyed.'

'Contaminated. The PCR analysis will have been rendered unusable.'

'Right. That. And all hairs and skin particles match that of the victim, not the perp.'

Sherlock grunted, but whether in annoyance or acknowledgement, it was difficult to tell. 'Cause of death? I'm guessing it was not asphyxiation?'

'Cerebral haemorrhage. Poor sod sustained a massive blow to the back of the head. Cracked the skull pretty badly. Possibly from hitting the ground, or being driven into it, or the perp used a large, blunt object. But yeah. That's what did it.'

'Brute force. Inelegant. Uninspired.'

'What's that?'

'Nothing. Go on.'

'That's all I've got at the moment—'

'Yes. Fine.'

'You and John should—'

'Ms Riley. Did you crack her?'

A sigh from the other end of the phone.

'Thought not.'

'Sherlock—'

Sherlock ended the call and looked out the window. Though still mid-afternoon, there was less than an hour of January daylight left in the sky. 'The police,' he said with disdain, 'are being as useless as ever. I need to see the crime scene for myself. John, I think it's time we . . .'

His mind was already seven steps ahead of his tongue, calculating how long it would take to get to Lower Clapton and how many minutes he'd have to look around before the sun disappeared entirely. He had entirely skipped over the part where he ascertained whether John was even in the room before beginning to speak. As it turned out, he was not, and Sherlock was talking to himself.

That hadn't happened in . . . years.

Stepping out onto the landing, he shouted up the stairs. 'John!'

A moment later, the bedroom door whined opened and John shuffled to the top of the stair, his hand on the wall in lieu of the cane. There were no signs that he had been sleeping: his eyes were bright and alert, his hair flat, clothing unrumpled, feet slippered. But then, what else might he have been doing? John's room was sparsely furnished—a seldom-used bed, a headboard that served also as a bedside table and bookshelf (bare), a four-drawer dresser, and a desk—and he kept little else besides clothing and shoes up there. His laptop and medical books were all in the sitting room. From what Sherlock could ascertain, John had been doing nothing at all in his room. Just thinking.

About what?

'Well?' asked John.

Sherlock realised he'd been standing mute at the foot of the stair while his thoughts had taken a detour from their original purpose. That distraction would have to wait.

'I'm going to the crime scene while it's still light. Coming?' He didn't dare to hope and kept his tone neutral.

'Does Lestrade know you're doing this?'

'No.'

They held one another's stares for another long breath.

'Let me get my shoes.'

The cab ride to Lower Clapton from Baker Street took twenty-six minutes. During the drive, Sherlock filled John in on Mr Jefferies and what little he had learnt at Bart's and from Lestrade, who, according to Sherlock, was being more unreasonable than usual of late. Meanwhile, John listened intently, watching the driver warily through the rear-view mirror, one hand poised near the door handle, the other squeezing the grip of his cane like a stress toy. Sherlock was pretty sure John had memorised the cab number before climbing inside, which, strictly speaking, hadn't been necessary. Sherlock had taken note himself.

'What does it mean?' asked John when he was finished. 'All these homeless men. Not only Jefferies and Hugh Freemont, but Pete and Lex, too.' Sherlock noted that he omitted Darren Hirsch but drew no attention to that.

'I don't know. Nor do I yet know what to make of the pattern of military history—the two overlap, though not perfectly. Freemont didn't have any military history; instead, he was the victim of two very unclever moles from the Yard. Not part of Moran's plot, just a consequence of it. Vander Maten, well, he was neither homeless nor military. It would seem . . .' He let the thought play out in his head first, to see if he was right.

'What?'

'Think about it, John. The Slash Man went after the homeless. But each man who was a former soldier—whether victim or perpetrator—was ostensibly selected by Sebastian Moran himself. His three henchmen, including the Slash Man, all had military history in addition to being displaced, that is, homeless. Everett Stubbins, too, was a military man, wasn't he, before he became a cop. And, of course, there's you.'

'I think he had a rather different reason for going after me,' said John tensely.

Sherlock nodded, though a little dismissively. 'Until the pattern becomes clearer, I'll not rule out any data points. Maybe Jefferies' combat service is relevant, maybe not. If it is, then it seems highly probable that this is not merely the work of the Slash Man, but that Darren Hirsch is still in the employ of one Sebas—'

'Stop saying the name,' John said quietly. But he cleared his throat to hide his discomfort and urged the conversation onward so as to not give Sherlock a chance to respond to it. 'So you think Jefferies was . . . selected . . . by him . . . but Daz is the one who did the deed?'

'Maybe. Or Darren Hirsch's . . . employer may have had a direct hand in the murder or in the . . . assault.' He was now picking his words more carefully. 'Or both. He's certainly capable of both. As you know.'

'Yes.' John cleared his throat again and paid extra attention to the cars zipping by on his right.

'Though, as I understand'—here he treaded very carefully indeed—'the Slash Man was the primary offender when it came to . . .'

'Mm.' John offered only a grunt to verify Sherlock's supposition.

Sherlock switched tracks. The analytical side of him needed more information on that point; the part of him that was more sensitive to John's trauma insisted he not press it. 'But. Like I said. I didn't get much off the body. Hopefully, the crime scene will give us more.'

'Sun's nearly set. Will you have enough light to see by?'

'Hardly a concern. A setting sun—you'll forgive me the pun—casts evidence in a different light. What Lestrade couldn't see at midday may very well be revealed to us.'

They arrived in Lower Clapton with barely twenty minutes left of daylight. The sky was a darkening yellow streaked with purple from the partly overcast sky, and the buildings cast long shadows in the narrow street where Sherlock directed the cabbie to drop them off, making it seem as though night had already fallen.

'Come, John, we have to hurry,' he said, checking his watch.

He had already cobbled together enough information from Lestrade, Molly, the victim, and the reports in the paper to have deduced the exact location where the body had been found. Down the street and to the north lay a stretch of lawn leading to a park barely large enough to give even a small dog a decent walk. Large trees and bushes had hidden the body from passing vehicles and most passers-by who skirted the park on the perimeter, but otherwise it had been in plain sight of the path cutting through the heart of the park. Sherlock hurried there now. John laboured to keep up, a few steps behind. Sherlock could hear him huffing, and if they weren't rapidly losing daylight, he'd slow; but John wasn't complaining or insisting they take things at a slower pace, so he pressed them onward.

They reached the park and crossed to the stretch of grass where Mr Jefferies had been found. Sherlock turned in place, eyes raking the frozen blades, darting to trees and bushes. He dug out his phone and began snapping photo after photo, in case the dark overwhelmed them too quickly. They could always return in the morning, but already he was piqued that he stood there a day too late. Who knew what evidence would be utterly destroyed given another ten hours or more?

'You're sure this is where they dumped him?' John asked, shivering a little in the cold, his breath rising as fog. He was also turning in place, more slowly. Sherlock noticed the slight crease in John's coat; he had brought his gun.

'Of course, I'm sure,' he said. 'What do you make of it, John?' Then he registered what John had said. 'Wait. Dumped. Why did you say dumped?'

John looked suddenly doubtful of himself. 'Molly said he'd been dead almost twelve hours, didn't she?'

'Yes.'

'But he was found at noon.'

'Yes.'

John nodded to the path. 'Not a soul in the park all morning?'

'Yes. Yes, of course. Sam Jefferies wasn't killed here at all. They murdered him somewhere else, held the body for approximately twelve hours, and then left it here for someone to find. The questions, then: When did they snatch him?'

'And where?'

'And why Sam Jefferies? And why wait twelve hours to dump the body in the middle of the day when they could have more easily disposed of him at night?'

'But no one saw him being dumped,' said John. 'You'd think that somebody would have noticed a dead man being dragged to the middle of a park. Bodies don't just fall out of the sky.'

'No. No, they don't . . .' Sherlock slowly turned his head skyward. 'But there's not a lot of sky up there to fall from.'

The air above them was crisscrossed with the long, bare arms of a horse chestnut tree. While Sherlock and John stood in the branches' mottled shadow, the setting sun struck something high above their heads, illuminating it by contrast: something white against the dark brown bark.

'John, do you see that?'

'What is that? A shoe?'

'My guess'—a slow, unstoppable smile began to spread and enliven his face—'is a white trainer.' Instantly, he began yanking at the fingers of his gloves, and he pushed his mobile into John's hands. 'Hold this.' He shoved the gloves into the pockets of his Belstaff coat.

'You're going to climb? Those branches are ten metres up!'

'Nine. And we need that shoe. I'm tall, John, but I'm not that tall. Climbing seems to be the best solution.'

'We can, I don't know, throw things at it.'

'There may be more up there to see than just a shoe.'

He proceeded to the base of the tree, walked around the trunk to get the measure of it and chart a path, then placed his bare hands on the cold bark. He gripped a lower branch and set his foot on a knot, hoisting himself up to the first branch, and began to climb.

'I expect I'm not the first,' he called out as he went. 'This tree is quite suitable for climbing.'

'You look like an overgrown child.'

Sherlock smiled. 'What do you think, John? Why is there a shoe in the tree?'

'Someone could have tossed it there.'

Huff. Grunt. Left hand here, right foot there. 'Maybe. Or . . . ?' he prompted.

'Or? Or, I don't know . . . left it there?'

'Getting warmer.' Sherlock pulled himself upright onto a lower branch and, cat-like, worked his way around and up the trunk like it was a twisted ladder until he stood on the same branch as the shoe. Using a higher branch for balance, he sidestepped his way closer.

'Keep talking, would you?'

He noted, to his own surprise, the controlled note of distress in John's voice, and his eyes fell to the earth to see John shifting his weight in agitation as he stared up at him. Only then did it occur to him how John's seeing him standing precariously at any sort of height might be upsetting. It was getting darker, more difficult to see each other clearly, but evidently his voice dispelled some of that distance. So he kept talking.

'Yes, definitely a trainer,' he said, as much to work through the evidence as to distract John from his anxiety. 'And without laces.'

'What?' John was having trouble hearing him.

He raised his voice. 'No shoelace!'

'It was used to tie the man's hands.'

'Indeed. And its alternate use is exactly why this shoe is now in this tree.'

John didn't reply straight away, and Sherlock waited while he puzzled through it on his own first. He lowered himself to straddle the branch and leaned close to examine something else: a line of scored bark, as though from chafing.

At last, John answered. 'You mean, it came off Jefferies' foot . . . while he was still in the tree?'

'Precisely!'

'Fell off?'

'Hardly.'

'He took it off?'

'Oh no. He was dead. Quite dead.'

'Then . . . ?'

'This branch forks like a Y, but the diverging branches are still relatively close together, and the trainer is tucked at the angle where the two branches meet. Also'—he bounced a little on the branch to show its resilience—'the branch is sturdy enough to hold the weight of a grown man. Two grown men. Jefferies and one other.'

'You're not saying he was killed in the tree!'

Sherlock chuckled. 'That would be a feat. No, he was dead when he got here. Already assaulted, hands already bound. There are score marks in the wood just here, from a rope, I'd wager. He was hoisted into the tree.'

'You mean, like a lynching?'

'The bruising on his neck indicated that he was dead before he was strangled.' As he spoke, Sherlock unwedged the shoe from the tree and turned it over and over in his hands, examining it as well as he could in the quickening dim. 'Mr Jefferies did die in this park, John, as the sodium hypochlorite would suggest. They found the bottle in those bushes, and his wounds were treated with it after his assault but before his death. But he was also dumped, as you so rightly put it, twelve hours later. His attacker—or attackers, as must be the case—grabbed him, beat him, bound his hands with his own shoelace, raped him, and used the sodium hypochlorite to destroy the evidence. Then they swung a rope around this branch, fixed one end to Mr Jefferies, and hauled him up here. One of them must have climbed the tree, same as I did, to pull him onto the branch, and to keep him from falling off, he was balanced between these two branches at the fork. The gap is narrow, but not narrow enough to preclude him from eventually slipping through. Given enough time and a strong enough wind, it was inevitable.'

He leaned forward to see a short, jagged twig jutting out from the side of the thicker branch. Its tip looked to have been broken off and was red with what he supposed was blood. That accounted for the scratch mark that was neither fingernail nor knife.

Sherlock continued. 'When he slips, at midday, his foot gets caught here at the joint, twists and breaks the ankle. There was no indication of swelling because he was already long dead. But without the lace, the shoe is loose and the foot slips through. Mr Jefferies falls.'

'But why haul him into a tree?' John called.

'Haven't the faintest. Seems an unnecessary gimmick. Someone was bound to lift his or her head to see a body in a tree, even if the police insist on practicing the art of short-sightedness. John, catch.' He tossed the shoe into the air; it arched, and John caught it in an outstretched hand.

'Coming down now, yeah?' John asked, working to control his tone so as not to sound anxious. But Sherlock heard it anyway.

'Coming down,' he agreed. He stood, grabbed hold of the higher branch, and began footing his way back to the trunk. Up this high, the remaining light from the set sun illuminated his path just enough for him to see by, though everything below him was dark.

'Sherlock.'

'On my way.'

'Sherlock.'

Casting his gaze down once again, he saw his mobile in John's hand, illuminated and throwing the scars of John's face into sharp relief.

'What is it?'

'Text.'

'From whom?'

John's head came up, away from the artificial glow, and his expression was lost in the shadow of the tree. 'From me.'

Sherlock swung himself down onto a lower branch, impatiently climbing downward in the dark, trusting his memory, not his vision, to find the next foothold, knot, or limb. Nearer the ground, he jumped and landed lightly on his feet.

'What do you mean, "from you"?' he asked, drawing nearer.

'My number. It's my number, Sherlock, my old one.' His voice was an exercise in control, but it was a thin lining sealing in the dread.

'Did you open it?'

In answer, John just handed him the mobile with the awaiting unread text. The screen displayed a series of digits, the number of John's lost phone. He hit the screen, opened the text message, and read four small words:

The cradle will fall.

Immediately, Sherlock looked around, casting his eyes to the shadows of bushes, to the path, and further to the street where headlights rolled by unassumingly.

'He knows we're here,' he said under his breath.

John breathed loudly through his nose, which Sherlock recognised as an effort to calm himself. 'Are we done here?' he asked softly. He was shifting his weight in agitation again, and Sherlock could see he was especially relying on the cane now. His leg must have been hurting him quite a lot.

He hesitated. Whoever had sent the text knew they were at the crime scene, they must. They knew he had found the shoe. Even now, there might have been eyes on them. How could he not pursue that? Track these people out, ferret them out, make them pay—?

John's knuckles were bloodless around the grip of his cane.

'We're done.' He dragged his eyes away from the shadows and to the shoe still in John's hand. 'I need to take a look at that back at the flat before I give it up tomorrow.'

'Give it up?'

'My gift to Lestrade.'

'Your bargaining chip, you mean.'

Sherlock couldn't help but smirk at John's characteristic incisiveness. It was too dark, however, to see whether John smiled in return. They turned in unison and headed back the way they had come, Sherlock casting his eyes to the shadows, searching, but he saw nothing. He dropped the phone back into his pocket, turning the text over and over again in his head.