CHAPTER 14: THE ROSE AND KETTLE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2015

At six in the morning, Lestrade's phone rang.

It was still in the pocket of his coat, which was draped on the opposite armrest of the sofa from where his head lay. With a great groan, he dragged himself up. He blinked, rubbed his stiff face, smacked his morning-dried lips, and reached for his coat even as the dream melted away, leaving him feeling like a dead weight was settled in his chest. Things weren't getting much better, in that regard, Dr Quinton be damned.

The caller ID read Mycroft Holmes.

He allowed himself another groan before answering.

'What.'

'A good morning to you, too.'

'It's still dark out, Mycroft. I was sleeping.'

He'd had another late one and hadn't even made it out of his shirt, and barely out of his shoes, before collapsing on the sofa, his head buzzing dully with fatigue. Kitty Riley had been charged with perverting the course of justice and obstructing police officers, although the charges had required a fancy bit of law interpretation, given that she wasn't withholding evidence but exposing it, and they had yet to prove that her source was not anonymous. Perhaps tech forensics would uncover something more damning on her personal computer, as police hadn't turned up anything useful at her house. Donovan still held firm to the belief that whoever had sent the email to begin with had been the same source to reveal the information about the still-unrecovered items from the evidence lockers, and she was confident that it was a Yarder who had stolen them to begin with. She walked around the Yard glowering at everyone, suspecting all, trusting none.

When Ms Riley's convoy of solicitors and barristers—paid for by The Sun—had shown up, they first instructed their client to stop talking, then began spouting diatribes on freedoms of the press and haranguing the Yard for its cowardice, incompetence, and scapegoating tactics. They announced that they would have Ms Riley free before noon the next day, and shame on the police for arresting an easy target when the real criminal was known and unmanaged. They meant Sherlock, of course, who had, by this time, returned with John to Baker Street and missed out on all the legal festivities. Lestrade had never wanted to be a copper less in his life.

Then, at nearly ten o'clock that night, just as he was getting ready to return home for a few hours of well-deserved rest, the call came in: two bodies found in a skip. Suspected but unconfirmed connection to the Slash Man killings. His night was just getting started.

Mycroft ignored his complaint. 'I know about the messages left on those bodies.'

'How?'

'Sherlock told me, obviously. This may surprise you to learn, detective inspector, but we talked half the night. He was in a right state, trying discern the meaning and trajectory of these slayings. I rather think he forewent sleep entirely.'

That did surprise Lestrade, in fact. Not that Sherlock hadn't slept—that was old habit—but that he had spent more than two minutes on the phone with his brother. 'And? Did the two of you clunk heads and figure out what the notes mean?'

'I've never had any interest in riddles.'

It was a Holmes' way of admitting he didn't know. In fact, it was nearly word for word what Sherlock had said, too, upon seeing the notes, shortly before launching into a lecture on the science of deduction being based on fact: the facts of the crime, the natural consequences to human actions, and the environmental conditions inherent therein. Riddles were puzzles of a fabricated and therefore artificial nature, a tease, not a science. But he knew he had to play. 'I'll work on it,' he said in the end, resigned.

'Leaving a note is a blatant taunt, as I'm sure you've inferred,' Mycroft continued. 'The killer is not at all attempting to obscure his identity, not if he's leaving you hints. He thinks he's clever—he is clever—and these latest victims do nothing to clarify the pattern but only obscure it further. Though his modus operandi has changed in some respects, I would not be so swift to leap to the conclusion that the victim profiles have as well. Rather, you have established the wrong profile and so you are misleading yourself.'

'For someone who talks an awful lot, you're not saying much. All we have to work from is the victim profiles! For all we know, these could be perfectly random hits!'

'They're not. There is no randomness here. I am sure that each victim was specially selected. But the reasons remain a mystery, and because of that, the stakes are growing ever more desperate. So even as we work on hunting these people down, we must take precautionary measures and protect what we can. I have another assignment for you, Greg.'

'Of course you do.'

'I need you to acquire some very sensitive information.'

'You do have minions, right? Little errand boys and girls you can send to—'

'Lestrade.'

Lestrade scrubbed his face even harder, as if he could scour the umbrage right off the skin. He was tired of Mycroft's tasks, of losing night after night of sleep performing them and seeing few if any of the results of his work. Mycroft never gave him follow-up details. Were they accomplishing anything at all?

'Yes, all right, what is it? What do I have to do?'

'There is a certain box of files—'

'Physical files?'

'Yes, physical files. Any government agent worth his salt knows how easily digital records can be hacked and recklessly disseminated, only to appear in public forums the very next day. Careless.'

Lestrade withheld a sigh of annoyance.

'This box is labelled MZ-106.5 RQ. Don't write that down. Repeat it back to me.'

He did.

'You need to locate the box, remove it to a safe location, and destroy it.'

'Right,' he said slowly. 'And where might this mystery box be located?'

'In a vault. Home Office, counter-terrorist division.'

Lestrade almost choked on his own morning spittle. 'Shit, Mycroft! You're shitting me!'

'What a vulgar image.'

'Just how the hell am I supposed to break into Home Office?'

'I have it all in hand. You follow my instructions, step by step, and you're in and out, easy as that.'

'Oh no. No. Not this one. No, Mycroft. You know what happens if something—anything—goes wrong? If I get caught?'

'Do have a little faith in my schemes.'

'I shouldn't even be having this conversation! Your people probably bugged my phone . . .' He rose to his feet and moved away from the window, his eyes stabbing the dark corners of his quiet sitting room, half expecting to see a bug.

Lestrade could almost hear the eye roll. 'The line is secure, I promise you.'

Call it early-morning ire, he was in a state. He gesticulated wildly and shouted into the phone. 'I don't understand why you can't just waltz in there and collect the stuff yourself. That's your pitch, not mine.'

'I could do that, yes. Easy as counting to three. But it would be best—for everyone—that no one know my interest in these particular files. It would be best if they just disappeared.'

Lestrade could feel himself caving. Mycroft was persuasive. When you stood beside him, you felt your smallness; when he pierced you with his omniscient stare, you felt the full measure of your mental simplicity. And even over the phone, when he spoke with a voice of authority, it was as if God himself were giving commandment, and you hastened to obey, if only to dodge a swift smiting. How John had ever withstood the man, he would probably never know.

At the very least, his curiosity was piqued. 'Why?' he asked. 'What's in them?'

'That would be reckless, to speak of it.'

'Oh, but talking about breaking into a government building isn't? Or giving me the file number?'

'Tell it to me again.'

'For the love of— Fine. MZ-106.5 RQ.'

'Very good. You've a knack for memorisation.'

'It's my proudest accomplishment.'

'You're making more of this than is needful. It is really a very straightforward and simple task I am asking you to perform. But if you are careless and do get caught, or if you are found in possession of these files before they can be obliterated, I will deny this conversation ever took place. I'll throw you under the bus, as they say.'

'You're a true friend, Mycroft.'

'Leave your house at 6.40 this evening and start walking. It doesn't matter which direction. Make no plans. A car will pick you up at seven exactly wherever you are. Wear rubber soles and dark clothes to burn after.'

It just kept getting better.

'Just—just assure me of one thing, Mycroft,' he said. He recognised that he was relenting even as he spoke, and his inner voice moaned loudly. 'This does have something to do with taking down Moriarty. His people, I mean. Doesn't it?'

'These days, everything I do is in that very interest. Everything you do, too, inspector.'

With that, the line went dead. The Holmes boys, it seemed, had never been taught the courtesy of a farewell.

'Are you comfortable? Can I get you bottled water?'

'Yes. Thank you.'

John sat nervously while Ella stepped over to the mini fridge to extract a small bottle of Evian. They had sat together for three sessions now, talking about John's daily routines, how (if) he envisioned his future, what seemed to be the most predictable triggers for his panic attacks, and how best to handle them. She'd done little more beyond that, other than change his anxiety medication, reissue Benzodiazepine, and encourage him to write. Yes, they were taking it slow, and he understood why. She was letting him get comfortable in that space, a space he had never been comfortable in before and couldn't say he was now. But when she had asked why he had returned to her and not seen a specialist in the particular traumas he had experienced, he answered simply, 'You know me.' And that was the truth of it. Ella knew more of his history and past struggles than any other therapist, so he wouldn't have to paint the canvas new. And with that familiarity came a level of trust. He knew how she worked. He knew that, unlike Dr Peabody, she had not spoken to the press about him. To that degree, he trusted her, so despite Sherlock's doubts and Mycroft's scoffs, he had come back to Ella Thompson.

Today, he knew, they weren't going to ignore the closed box any longer. He took a long drink, half emptying the bottle. He thought how Sherlock would have anticipated this and brought him two.

'I'd like us to try something different today,' Ella said. 'An exercise that is new to you. It's helped many of my patients, and the literature on it reports encouraging results from case studies across Britain and France.'

'What is it?' he asked.

'It's called safety zone therapy.'

'Sounds kitschy.'

She smiled. 'Let me explain how it works. It's about encountering your fears in an environment you know and trust. Dr Ibrahim David offered the analogy of a child who is afraid of the dark. Alone in a dark room, the child's imagination conjures all manner of monsters and dangers. But put on the light so the child can see his own, familiar room, and the fears go away. The light is important, but just as important is the space. The child's bedroom itself is a place of safety and sanctuary. It has a power to protect all its own.

'Of course, with adults, and with true trauma situations, things aren't as simple as flipping a switch. But the principles are the same. Currently, John, you are unable to confront your traumas directly. But even as your conscious mind resists these troubling memories, you constantly dwell on them in a subconscious space. Asleep, these memories manifest as dreams—monsters and dangers, unbounded, like in a child's imagination. Awake, they are still there, suppressed, until, when triggered, they push through into your reality. They instigate panic attacks, hallucinations, and other physiological stresses.'

He nodded stiffly.

'To confront these traumas, as you must, it is imperative that you are at ease: calm and in control. Only then will you be confident in the knowledge that these memories have no further power to hurt you.'

Already, he was doubting the legitimacy of this exercise. He knew that trauma was reiterative, that it was memory itself that gave power to it and enabled it to hurt him at all. He was more inclined to believe that extracting the memories altogether and burning them in a pyre was more plausible than accepting the notion that recalling the horrors of that kitchen would ever lack the power to wound him again.

'Like I said, we can't just flip a switch. But we can tap into the same power of protective spaces that calm a frightened child. First, though, you need an appropriate space. I'm not talking about this office. I mean a mental space. I want you to imagine an appropriate space. This space needs to be peaceful, protected, a place in your mind you can retreat to when I tell you to go there. For this to be most effective, it is best that you envision a real-world place you already know intimately. So I want you to imagine that space now, John. Close your eyes. Good. Now think about a place you remember with fondness. Let this be a happy space, a secure space, one free of bad memories, worry, sorrow, or fear. It can be a childhood bedroom. Grandmother's sitting room. A house on the beach you went to on holiday once upon a time.'

His brow furrowed as he searched the recesses of his mind for a place that met Ella's criteria. He travelled cautiously down the corridors of his own memory, but every time he turned a corner, he halted, retreated; he feared what lay at the end of nearly every passageway.

'You don't need to say it aloud. In fact, it's best that you don't. It is your private space, so guard it; no one can enter it, not even me. Wherever it is, that is your sanctuary, John. Yours.'

She gave him a moment to think, and in that silence, in the dark of his mind, he saw that childhood bedroom where he had cried himself to sleep, a boy whose mother was ravaged by cancer. He considered the smatterings of miserable, little shared flats in his early bachelor days, but he could name none of them with partiality. He remembered the medical tents pitched in the Afghan desert and the stench of blood and saline and body odour. He thought of the austere one-room flat the Army pension afforded him, its bare walls, narrow bed, and single window. And when the image of the sitting room of 116 Porters Avenue resurfaced in his mind, he felt something wrench inside of him. He shoved that image aside and found himself standing in 221B.

'Have you found one? Are you seeing it?' she asked him.

It wasn't a perfect fit—he knew it. In that flat, he had suffered his worst nightmares, his most debilitating panic attacks. Even before all that, his memory was littered with moments of unpleasantness, like finding a human head in the refrigerator; or drinking what he mistook for coffee but which turned out thrice-boiled halibut that had, for some reason, been stored in the coffee pot (he should have noted how the colour was off, but, in his defence, it had been a pretty early morning); or being woken at four in the morning by a series of mini explosions and the hiss of a fire extinguisher. But even at the thought of these things, his mouth quirked fondly. Even after all that had happened, 221B was where he felt—where he had always felt—most at home. It was more comforting than the flat he had grown up in as a child, more familiar than his many flats as a young bachelor, and more real, even, than the home he had known on Porters. Eyes still closed, he nodded.

'Good. Now open your eyes. Here's what we're going to do, John,' she continued. She passed him a notepad and a pen from her desk. 'I'm going to ask you to recall an event, something that happened to you that still causes you distress. I want you to remember it fully and describe it out loud, in as much detail as you can bear. And whenever I ring this bell'—she reached for a small silver bell on her desk and shook it: a light tinkling noise, soft and friendly—'I want you to write a number on that paper. On a scale of one to ten, I want you to rate your level of anxiety. One is perfectly calm and in control.'

'And ten?'

'I think you know what ten feels like. But I won't let things escalate to a ten.'

He inhaled slowly and held it.

'If you write any number higher than five, John, I want you to stop talking and to think of your safe zone, whatever space you have designated as your sanctuary. Imagine yourself there, and when you do, I want you to feel its positive energy and protective influence. Let the peace and power of that place absorb the undesirable emotions you feel.'

He worried, instead, about contaminating it. He looked down at the blank pad. 'We're really going to do this today, aren't we?'

'We're going to do it right now. How would you rate your level of anxiety at this very moment?'

'A four.'

His heart was making such a racket he was surprised she couldn't hear it herself; his palms sweated into the armrests and around the pen.

'That's a bit high to start with.'

'What can I say? I don't want to do this.'

'Maybe we should start in the safe zone then. Go on, John. Close your eyes again. Picture yourself in the space you've designated as secure. Empty it of any clutter, noise, or people. It's just you.'

There was nothing for it: she was pushing him onward, and if he didn't want to stumble, he'd best move his feet. So he imagined the sitting room of 221B at midday, with its well-used chairs in front of a cold hearth and the mirror hanging above the mantle; he imagined the long curtains framing the tall windows and the high bookshelves stuffed with encyclopaedias and dictionaries and nineteenth-century penny dreadfuls; he pictured the wooden floorboards and plush red-and-gold rugs; he saw the dark chocolate fleur de lys trellis on the walls, the skulls, the teacups and coffee mugs and open laptops and loose pages spreading across the desk. Clutter? Oh yes, and he'd forgotten which was his and which wasn't. Not that it mattered. Not really. Nor was the flat a quiet space. Outside, the loud hum of cars and buses as they rolled by on the street; and from the kitchen, the clinking of beakers against flasks while a fresh brew of coffee dripped into the pot (he could smell it); from the stairs, familiar, eager footsteps; and just behind him, the sigh of a violin. He couldn't see him—but he could hear him, feel him, in every corner of that space, all at once. She had said to empty the space of everything and everyone but himself, but there was no 221B without Sherlock.

And now, the tinkling of a bell.

On the pad, he wrote the number two.

'Tell me about the day you were kidnapped,' said Ella gently.

The violin missed a note. But the smell of coffee still hung in the air.

'I took the wrong cab,' said John, beginning.

The police did have some skill at finding people, even those who did not wish to be found, which was how Cleona Winters came to be in Bart's mortuary, standing over the body of her slain son, whom she had not seen since he had run away from her thirteen years ago.

'That's him,' she said. She was a tall woman, fifty years old, perhaps, and with a face hardened by a lifetime of bitterness. Her voice was husky, still accented by the Jamaica she had left as a girl to come to this country in search of a better life. What she got instead was poverty, abuse, and a murdered child. Though her expression was impassive, the tears flowed freely down her cheeks. 'That's my Ralston.'

Beyond the double doors, the father of Lynette Avery wailed unrestrainedly in the arms of a new mortuary attendant for his dead daughter.

Molly stood to the side as Dr Torrence zipped up the heavy black bag, hiding the battered face of yet another victim. She had spent the last day and a half with those bodies, inside and out, cataloguing every abuse and running every test and making a full and urgent report. The similarities to the other victims were there: bound hands, sexual assault, evidence of strangling, and trace amounts of sodium hypochlorite. But whereas Winters had died from a blow to the head, Avery had died from blood loss. As with every corpse that came through her morgue, she had regarded the bodies in pieces: the eye, the liver, the toenail. She had to, or she wouldn't have been able to do her job. It wasn't until the loved ones came that the reality of their humanity struck her, and she could no longer divorce the soul from its tabernacle. Each time, it took all her all her remaining fortitude to keep herself from weeping with them. So it was today.

'It's him, isn't it,' said Ms Winters. 'The one I've been reading about in the papers. He's done this to those other homeless boys?'

'You would have to talk to the police about that,' said Dr Torrence, though not without sympathy.

'Why have they not done something by now?' she cried. 'How many is it going to take! My boy's dead, and he's not the first, and look what they done to him. Just look!' She suddenly started to shake. She bowed at the waist and covered her face in her hands.

Dr Torrence gave Molly a look that she understood at once, so often had she seen it over the years. She stepped forward, put an arm around the grieving woman, and steered her toward the door. It would be her job to settle her, get her to sign the appropriate paperwork, and see that she was taken care of.

By the time Molly left St Bartholomew's for the day, it was six o'clock and the sun was already an hour gone from the sky. She caught the 46 bus, and as it rumbled through the city, she took out her phone to check for missed calls. There were none. She thought about phoning Greg, just to say hi, but she knew that with this latest double murder (Sherlock had been certain that they were killed in the same location, and though she had determined that they had died about a day apart, they were still being classified as a double murder), he was likely to be too occupied to take her call. And so, refusing to feel the stab of disappointment or the long ache of lonesomeness, she shoved the phone back inside her handbag, hugged herself tightly for warmth, and waited until the bus trundled to her stop.

Her postbox was empty, her neighbours' windows dark. She rattled about in her handbag for her key and fitted it in the door, thinking of the hot shower she would take to wash away the stink of formaldehyde. The key turned easily. Pushing the door open, she entered the dark flat and groped for the light.

'Cheshire!' she called, followed by a sswsswss sound to summon her cat. At six months old, he was at last content to be left alone and now knew to use the scratcher board and not her wallpaper and curtains. She expected him to be lazying on the sofa, where she normally found him, but instead he came trotting in from the kitchen.

'I hope you've not been naughty,' she said, scooping him into her arms. She tapped her nose against his and stroked his calico fur. Then she dropped him on the sofa, shed her coat, and tossed her handbag onto a chair.

She was just removing her shoes when she noticed, on the cleared, round dining table, a single rose and a white card standing on its end. Her heart skipped a beat and a slow smile crept across her face, hardly daring to believe what she saw. She and Greg had exchanged keys two months ago, but neither had yet taken advantage of the implied invitation that they were both too shy to speak. But oh! He had left her a rose! Why would he have left her a rose? But of course, she remembered now. It was February 13. In all the madness of their lives and jobs, she had all but forgotten the approaching holiday. She was touched that he had not.

Still smiling, heart now tripping, she picked up the long stem and put the petals to her nose, breathing in deeply. She remembered that he had once suggested she put flowers in the mortuary, to 'liven things up a bit'. A terrible suggestion, for reasons of practicality if not tact, but one she would never forget, and she supposed, now, that he had a liking for flowers. She'd actually never been given flowers, especially not as a romantic gesture, but she suddenly decided that she liked them, too. Very much.

Then she picked up the card. Her name appeared on the outside in a beautiful, looping scrawl. And inside, in the same hand, these words:

Molly, put the kettle on.
We'll all have tea.

She laughed aloud as the nursery tune popped into her head. So this was a game, was it? She had heard of couples sending one another on scavenger hunts, but she'd never done something like this before. Leave it to a detective, though, to send her after clues.

Humming the tune, she left the card on the table but took the rose with her into the kitchen, still breathing in its fragrance, as though she could filter her whole world now through the scent of that flower. She turned on the tap and reached for the kettle. But when she lifted it, she felt something heavy already inside slide along the base. Her second clue? She set aside the flower and eagerly lifted the kettle lid.

Molly screamed. The kettle clattered loudly, fallen upon the kitchen tiles.

Inside the kettle lay a dead bird.