A little bit of Anglo-Saxon cursing in this chapter!

Chapter Forty Four

'What sort of private club?'

'A private gentleman's club.'

'And the memory stick is in there?'

'Yes.'

'Where in there?'

'In a locker.'

Moran was wary. He didn't feel comfortable about walking into a strange place, not knowing what to expect. He needed more information.

'What locker?'

'Give me the pad and pen,' Sherlock hissed, finding speech exceedingly painful and concerned about what further damage he may be causing by speaking.

Moran obliged and waited as Sherlock scribbled furiously on the pad and then showed him the page. He read:

'Members have private lockers. I am a member. Memory stick in my locker.'

'And where is this damn locker?' Moran demanded, more forcefully.

'LOCKER ROOM' he wrote and underlined it three times.

'Don't push your luck further than you have already, Mr Holmes. Now we know where the evidence is to be found, your usefulness is somewhat diminished,' Moran growled.

Sherlock gave him a withering look then scribbled on the pad, once more.

'PRIVATE club. Only members and guests of. You need me to GET IN.'

'Not necessarily,' Moran replied, 'but I suppose to do it with the least amount of fuss it would be easier with you than without. OK, where is this locker room?'

More scribbling

'Come in. I'll show you.'

'Actually, I don't think I will, thank you. My men will come in with you, see that you don't try anything silly. I'll wait here,' he said, with a self-satisfied smirk. 'When you're ready…' he added and left that sentence hanging in the air.

Sherlock scribbled something else and showed it to the men either side, hoping that they could actually read.

'No talking AT ALL. IT'S THE CLUB RULE.'

Moran looked at the instruction, too.

'No talking at all? What sort of crazy rule is that?'

'Don't like, don't join,' Sherlock wrote and showed it to the Colonel before pushing the pad and pen into his trouser pocket and turning to the man on his left, giving him a nudge to indicate he was ready to go.

As he strode along the pavement toward the main entrance to the Diogenes Club, Sherlock experienced a rare sensation – a feeling of doubt. If Mycroft had not correctly interpreted his coded message, these could be the last moments of his life. He had no ace in the hole, there was no Get Out of Gaol card. He had gambled everything on his belief in his brother's deductive powers. He was about to discover whether his trust was misplaced.

He turned the handle and pushed open the imposing front door, turning to his companions and placing his index finger on his lips, to remind them not to speak. If either one of these Neanderthals was to utter a single syllable, the game might well be up. He really needed to get them through the public areas and into the private room at the back as quickly and quietly as possible.

The trio stepped over the threshold into the foyer and Sherlock took all his doubts and concerns, stuffed them into a cupboard in his Mind Palace, and locked the door. He led the way across the elaborately tiled floor and turned right into a short corridor which opened onto and passed through the Reading Room.

In this long, narrow, wood panelled salon, a row of identical wing chairs, each upholstered in leather, was positioned along each side. Every chair was occupied by its own particular version of Diogenes Man – variations on a theme – each intent on his evening newspaper, each with a post-prandial brandy at his elbow. All the chairs were angled away from the entrance to the room and towards the wall so that none of the occupants were in the direct sight line of any of the others. No one looked up or showed the slightest interest in the newcomers.

Sherlock strode on, through the Reading Room, watching from the corner of his eye as his companions stared with curious incomprehension at this strange collection of artifacts from a bygone era. They cleared the salon and continued down a corridor, which ran the full depth of the building with several closed doors leading off to the left, until they came to a pair of solid oak doors, right at the back of the edifice.

Sherlock turned again and made the 'shush' sign to his guards then pushed open both doors and stepped through into a large, well-proportioned Georgian room, beautifully appointed, with wooden panelling and floorboards, a grand Adam fireplace in the middle of the right hand wall, a Persian rug on the floor, two wing chairs facing one another in the centre of the rug and elegant sideboards around the perimeter. Two large windows on the back wall were dressed with heavy brocade curtains, pulled to against the darkness outside.

Sherlock walked straight into the room, leaving both doors wide open to admit his 'shadows', and crossed to the sideboard positioned between the two windows. Kneeling on the floor, he opened one door of the sideboard to reveal a solid-looking safe with an old-fashioned dial mechanism to the combination lock. As he reached towards the dial, he heard a loud scuffling behind him and turned to see his two burly companions being wrestled to the floor by four equally burly assailants. As he watched, the two men were quickly over-powered, disarmed and handcuffed before being frogmarched away.

He rose to his feet and looked into the face of his brother, sitting quietly in the wingchair with its back to the doorway, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, hands in his lap, fingers plaited together.

'Do sit down, brother dear, before you fall down, you bloody idiot,' Mycroft purred.

'Moran?' Sherlock croaked.

'Oh, don't worry. He won't get far. Sit down, I said! You look half dead!'

Sherlock stumbled to the empty chair and lowered himself, gratefully, into the seat as Mycroft rose, crossed to a side table bearing a decanter and glasses, and poured a stiff whisky, placing it on the small round table beside his brother's chair.

'You've led us a bit of a merry dance, Sherlock,' Mycroft scolded, retaking his seat.

Sherlock gave a small shrug and took a sip of the whisky. It tasted like nectar.

'What's wrong with your voice?' Mycroft asked.

Sherlock put a hand to his throat and mimed squeezing.

'Oh, good lord,' Mycroft sighed. 'You really aren't safe to be let out on the street, are you?'

Sherlock ignored that comment and just sipped his whisky again.

ooOoo

Moran sat in the Touareg, beside his driver, tapping his fingers nervously against his knee. His men had been gone for only five minutes but it seemed like an age. The building into which they had disappeared showed absolutely no signs of life – no sound, no movement, no lights – but something about the situation just didn't seem right. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck and he had always trusted his instincts.

He looked at the illuminated dial of his watch again. Six minutes gone, now. Just how long did it take to open a locker and extract a memory stick? He took out his mobile phone and was about to call his main man on the ground when Mick Robinson suddenly sprang into action. Slamming the vehicle into reverse, he floored the accelerator and gunned the idling engine into powerful motion, executing a faultless hand break turn which gave Moran a new perspective on the street, showing him what Robinson had seen in his rear view mirror. There were a number of men all in black, wearing flak jackets and baseball caps and carrying assault rifles, pouring into the street from a side road, threatening to overwhelm the car.

Robinson switched fluidly to first gear and gunned the engine again, causing the tyres to shriek, as the car gained momentum and careered down Carlton House Terrace, to turn right into Waterloo Place. But both the driver and his passenger could see, well before they got there, that both the 'in' road and the exit were blocked by police vehicles.

'Shit! How the fuck did they know we would be here?' Moran barked, hanging on to the hand hold, above the passenger door to avoid behind thrown around in the speeding car. Robinson drove on to the next junction, Carlton Gardens, desperate to gain access to Pall Mall and make their escape, but there was a police road block there, too. Continuing straight on, Robinson saw he was approaching a dead end – a gated entry into a large park or a garden of some kind.

Rather than slowing down, he changed gear and floored the accelerator again, driving head long at the centre of the double gates. The vehicle hit the gates with a jarring force but the reinforced body and the sheer momentum won the day. The gates sprang open and the car raced through the gap. As they drove, pell mell, through the shrubbery, Moran could make out a large imposing building on his left and an open green space in front. The car charged across the ornamental lawn and met another paved roadway.

As soon as the tyres touched the tarmac and gained purchase, the car shot forward again and, by the time it reached the junction with Marlborough Road, it was traveling at 60 miles per hour. There was no police road block at this T junction and the Touareg took the corner on two wheels, going left and then right, onto The Mall, heading towards Buckingham Palace.

Moran glanced across at his driver and saw that look of grim determination on Mick Robinson's face. He was not going to give up easily, this man. Moran congratulated himself on choosing his staff wisely. Looking back in the direction of travel, the Colonel gritted his teeth, too, as the vehicle raced along, nearing seventy miles per hour, weaving in and out of the relatively thin traffic, heading for the Victoria Memorial roundabout. Most of the other vehicles on the road very wisely pulled into the side and stopped, giving the Touareg priority.

As they came up to the roundabout immediately in front of Buckingham Palace, Robinson turned right towards Constitution Hill, with the intention of picking up the A4 and going East, towards Knightsbridge, but he had underestimated the ingenuity of the forces ranged against him. As they turned onto Constitution Hill, with Buckingham Palace on their left, they were confronted with an array of flashing lights and a solid block of police and army vehicles spread right across the road. Checking his rear view mirror, Robinson saw several more vehicles that had been stationed behind the Memorial move into place, killing any hope of another reverse escape. Rather than drive headlong into the vehicles in the road, the driver hit the brakes and came to a sliding, screaming halt, as smoke rose from the protesting tyres and the pungent smell of burning rubber permeated the interior of the car.

'Sorry, boss,' Robinson muttered as they both stared out of the Touareg at the phalanx of paramilitary personnel approaching along the road, assault rifles all trained on them, through the bullet proof glass of the front windscreen. If even just a few of those weapons fired at once, there was no way the glass would resist the impact. Moran let out a long exhalation of breath, as he finally conceded defeat.

ooOoo

I hope you enjoyed that - my first car chase! I'm off to London again, this weekend, for my darling boy's birthday. But I will be home on Tuesday and back at the key board again.