Eleven Weeks and Six Days Ago. Outside 221B Baker Street
Sherlock, carrying the laptop he took from Tom hours before, was spared the necessity of finding a taxi to drive him to his next destination by the appearance of a black car he recognized immediately as belonging to his brother Mycroft. He braced himself for the forthcoming lecture his brother would doubtless visit upon him and stepped into the back seat.
"Hello brother mine," Mycroft said with little cheer.
"Mycroft, just in time to give me a ride to Belgravia."
"I do like to be of service." Mycroft told the driver to head southeast toward the wealthy London neighborhood and turned back to Sherlock and said, "How are your hands this morning? They appear to be all sorts of interesting shades of purples, blues, and blacks."
"I suppose I have you to thank for the strangely malfunctioning CCTV cameras in Chelsea last night."
"I have no idea of what you are speaking. But," Mycroft continued, turning to his brother with the utmost seriousness, "if you do anything like that again, Sherlock, you'll be in the cell next to our dear demented sister in Sherrinford."
"Noted."
"And how is Dr. Hooper?"
"Uncooperative."
"How so?"
"She's insisting on staying at DI Lestrade's house while the investigation is on-going."
"Rather than live with you? Hardly a shocking choice. Do you want me to sequester her in the Hebrides by force?"
Sherlock took a deep breath before saying, "It's tempting . . . but no."
"How grown up of you, not having a complete snit about not getting your way."
"I hate it," Sherlock said.
"Don't we all. What are your working theories so far?"
"The package is just an attention grabber, meant to set the game in motion, get the players into place. Whoever sent the package knows two important things. First, that invoking the name Moriarty means the certainty of my involvement in the case."
"And second?"
"Whoever sent it knows something Moriarty never knew."
"Which is?"
"That Molly matters to me."
"Euros?" Mycroft queried.
"I'm not ruling her out entirely, but she would have had to put all this into motion quite a while ago and be willing to forgo seeing it through to the end, which I don't think is her style. She'd want control. She'd want to watch everything unfold."
"So it's a waiting game, then," Mycroft surmised, "to see what the next move is."
"Stop here," Sherlock directed Mycroft's driver, stopping in front of a fashionable Victorian townhouse in the heart of Belgravia.
"Oh no, not the Honourable Amelia Southbridge. I'd tell you to give her my regards, but I have none for her." Sherlock laughed at his brother and started to exit the vehicle when Mycroft grabbed his arm and said, "Brother, please try to keep your emotions in check. You can't help Molly if you're completely unhinged." But Sherlock shrugged his brother off, knowing him to be right, but not wanting to hear it anyway.
Amelia Southbridge descended from one of the wealthiest and most esteemed families in all of Britain, but one would never think so upon meeting her. Most of her body was covered by an assortment of anti-establishment tattoos and frighteningly painful-looking piercings. Her manner of dress always conjured up old album covers for second-rate punk banks. And, although afforded one of the best educations available in the world, she affected a manner of speech more reminiscent of East London Cockney than the Queen's English.
Her hatred for wealth and privilege apparently didn't keep her from having hired help, however. So Sherlock Holmes had been led to her study by a butler that looked like he could have been an extra on Downton Abbey. Upon entering her "study," Sherlock found a room festooned with provocative anti-government, anarchist posters and a host of laptops, servers, and loads of electronic equipment that baffled the non-hardcore computer nerd. Amelia Southbridge, 54th in line for the English throne, was a hacker, and a very talented one.
"Mel!" Sherlock called out cheerfully at the site of her typing away furiously on her laptop.
"Great, I had been thinking that the only thing I was missing today was a visit from some annoying upper-classed twit. And along you come to make my day complete."
"Is that a new tattoo, Mel?" Sherlock asked, pointing to a prominent design taking up much of her neck and lower jaw. "Why don't you just get one that says, 'yes, I hate my parents' and get it over with?"
"Fuck off, then. What you doing here?"
Sherlock held up Tom's laptop and said, "I have a job for you."
"I told you last time, I only do jobs that help destroy the global hegemonic machine. Does your job involve destroying the global hegemonic machine?"
"Umm, not quite."
"Then fuck off." She turned back to her computer and dismissed Sherlock with a wave of her hand.
Sherlock went around the table Amelia sat working at in order to regain her attention. "It might not bring about a new world disorder, but it will help me punish someone who did something quite horrible to a woman." And that is why Sherlock sought out Amelia Southbridge today and not one of the other dozen hackers he knew: because they were all men and Amelia prized herself (a little too highly, Sherlock thought) as a radical feminist and would be disgusted enough by Tom's betrayal of Molly to agree to help him. And, beyond that, the job ahead would require looking at those revealing photographs themselves and Sherlock did not want one more man to see them.
"Ok, talk," she relented and listened to Sherlock explain that the laptop he carried contained sexually-revealing photos of a woman and that those photos had been distributed without her knowledge or consent. "And you want me to . . . ?"
"Track down every person that was sent these photographs. I have a list, but I want to make sure the list is accurate, that he didn't leave anyone off. And I'm going to need to get some help after I track down the bastards that received the photos."
While Amelia made a show of considering the job, Sherlock felt his mobile phone issue a text alert. He glanced at it.
Molly Hooper: I brought the items you requested last night to the lab. They're here.
Inwardly, he groaned, knowing how hard this must be for Molly and wanting more than anything to relieve her torture.
"Alright, but it's going to cost you," Mel said.
"An anarchist like you, out for filthy lucre?"
"You want my help or not, you fucking prat?"
He did.
The closer Sherlock's taxi came to St. Bart's, the more nervous and anxious he became at the prospect of facing Molly. The memory of their last moment together the night before haunted him. Her face had been less than a hand's length from his and he had so badly wanted to kiss her and believed that she had wanted the same. He went over the moment again and again, replaying it, sometimes imagining what it might have been like to touch her lips, to taste her.
But he convinced himself that he had done the right thing to leave. He would have been taking advantage of her in a vulnerable state. He would have further compromised his emotional involvement in the case. He would have altered even more the nature of their relationship to one another and given her hope that they could be something more than friends, which they could never be. It simply could never happen. He recalled Shakespeare's words from Richard III, "And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, — I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days." Well, Sherlock Holmes was not determined to be a villain, exactly, but rather determined to remain a solitary hero, for he certainly could never prove to be a lover.
His sad circumspection about his role in this troubled universe would have to be put aside for the moment, though, for he had necessary, but difficult, work ahead for this afternoon.
Before entering Molly's lab, Sherlock took a deep intake of breath, steeling himself and trying to effect a calm demeanor for her benefit. All his mental preparations deserted him, however, at the site of her. She looked defeated—sad and defeated. Her eyes were puffy from crying and every part of her slumped, as if just being alive sapped all of her energy. Everything about the way she looked cried out to Sherlock to comfort her. But he resisted that temptation somehow.
"Molly."
"Hello Sherlock. The, um, items you asked for are in a paper bag over there," she said, pointing to it. "I would rather not be here when you examine them."
"Of course. You don't have to be."
"I have two bodies to autopsy. If you need anything, you can ask Peter, ok?"
"Yes, of course. Is there anything I can . . . "
She cut him off. "I don't want those things back. Just please throw them in the hospital incinerator after you're done with them, if you don't mind."
"If you wish it."
"I do."
"Molly?"
"What?"
"I . . . " But Sherlock didn't really know what he wanted to say.
"Yeah," Molly said and walked past Sherlock, leaving the lab to him.
He first examined the articles of clothing. All were the exact same brand, design, and color as the ones Molly provided. The panties and the nightie were also of the exact same measurements as Molly's, so were, for all practical purposes, identical to them. The bustier, however, was one half of one size smaller than the one Molly owned. This slight difference told him that, while the person or persons collecting these replicas could guess Molly's size generally, that they never had access to the original articles, which proved to be somewhat of a relief to Sherlock.
The brands were popular ones, available almost anywhere, and bore reasonable prices, unlike the perfume that wafted from the package, which is something Molly could have never afforded. Thus, Sherlock concluded that the clothing offered few clues as to their origin. He found no valuable trace evidence on the clothing or on the book or the lubricant. Those last two items were likely added to the package to make it more embarrassing, not because they held any meaning, he believed.
The vibrators too were of the same make and model and offered no external trace evidence. However, there is one thing often overlooked by criminals leaving behind electrical devices of various kinds: batteries. While they diligently remember to wipe all fingerprints off the surfaces of objects, they often forget internal surfaces, as, for example, with batteries. It was a long shot, but Sherlock took the batteries out of the vibrator sent in the package. His first real break was that the batteries were a store's generic brand rather than a premium brand. Normally, that wouldn't be of that great a value, but he recognized the store as one only found in North America. Statistically, the likelihood of generic batteries from a North American store winding up in a device bought and used entirely in Great Britain were small, suggesting that the vibrator spent at least some part of its life on that continent.
Then came the second break with the batteries: usable fingerprints. They could lead nowhere or they could be pivotal to the case. Sherlock carefully lifted the fingerprints and texted Lestrade to send a technician over to collect them. This was really promising, he thought.
The last object of serious potentiality was the pair of handcuffs. If they were novelty handcuffs, they could yield little value, but, if real police handcuffs, they carried a signature in the form of a serial number that would lead Sherlock to their origin. He felt elated when he discovered the hoped-for sequence of letters and numbers on the inside of one of the cuffs. He texted Lestrade the serial number and, within fifteen minutes, Scotland Yard had located the handcuffs' home: the New York City Police Department. Along with the discovery of the generic North American store brand batteries, two objects now pointed directly across the pond. This was at least something.
Reviews are things of beauty and keep the demons away and the muses close by.