CHAPTER 4: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
CHAPTER 4: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
"Cryptic," Sherlock mumbles thoughtfully, looking down at the note. "She was in a hurry and only left what seems to be a useless message before taking her own life. Yet she went to a lot of trouble to hide it. But why the rush and those precautions?"
His questions echo in the room. He wanders for a while, pacing the floor. Suddenly he whips his head up and widens his eyes in realisation.
"Oh! Someone was hunting her down. She knew they would eventually find her, so she came here and wrote those words for a very specific person. It's not a common suicidal note. This one was meant to be extremely personal. And for some reason, she didn't want her chasers to read it." He makes a pause before whispering, "Someone wanted her dead."
Lestrade frowns. "And she preferred to kill herself?"
Sherlock gives him a grim look. "She wasn't afraid of dying, but she feared something worse."
"Worse than death?"
Holmes stares into his eyes, spelling out gravelly, "Torture."
"Why would someone torture her?"
"To get information," Sherlock replies as if it was crystal clear. As much as there might be sadistic people on this earth that would torture others just for fun, he knows that this wasn't the case. She wasn't randomly attacked in a dark alley by a maniac. She knew that someone was coming for her, and she knew what they wanted. Most importantly, she was aware of what fate would be waiting for her if she let them put their hands on her.
Lestrade sighs. "Right. And what kind of information?"
"About a terrorist attack. It's obvious, isn't it?" intervenes a nasal voice belonging to a man with short brown hair that has just entered the room. He is wearing a coverall and a pair of latex gloves.
Sherlock glances at him for a second, and his eyes fill with disdain.
"Where did you dig out this brilliant idea, Anderson?" He emphasises the irony of his question.
"From the piece of evidence gathered in this house and the security footage in nearby stores. Several cameras caught her," Anderson points an accusatory finger at the body, "with a group of men suspected of terroristic affiliations, who were being monitored by Scotland Yard." He leans arrogantly against the wall.
"This explains the freeze-frame from security footage in her report," Sherlock realises, shooting a reproachful look at Lestrade for not being more outspoken during their phone call.
"Although, the mere fact she was mingling with the wrong crowd doesn't prove that she was one of them. Terrorists do not commit suicide without causing damages and casualties." He glances at the corpse on the floor, then affirms confidently, "She was simply on the run. Cathy Baaral was not a terrorist."
"I don't know about that, but I can say you got something wrong. This woman isn't Cathy Baaral." Lestrade says as wrinkles crowd his forehead.
Sherlock shoots a disoriented look at him, then fishes his phone out of his pocket, opens the photo attached to the text, and compares it with the victim's face.
"Of course she is."
The D.I. shakes his head slowly.
"This is what I tried to tell you just a few moments ago, but you interrupted me with your deductions. Everyone believed so, then we got lab results."
Holmes freezes. "The DNA doesn't match?"
"It partly does. But the fingerprints don't," the inspector clarifies, leaving the detective visibly confused.
"I'm not following. How's it possible?"
Lestrade r looks like he is about to announce that the aliens just invaded Earth.
"Because this is Cathy Baaral's secret twin."
The unexpected announcement leaves Sherlock in shock: he doesn't stir an eyelash, he barely breathes.
Anderson intervenes to explain the situation scientifically.
"As far as we can get from lab results, it's a case of monozygotic twins, which are genetically nearly identical. The DNA is very similar with just slight differences only detectable through the analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphism. But the police rarely run such an examination or dig that deep, which is why we initially thought it was good enough for a match. Identical twins, however, do not have the same fingerprints. The contact with different parts of the environment inside the womb produces slight variations in the same digital, making them unique."
He pauses to let Holmes grasp the concept, then adds, "I think this is all the medical knowledge you need to believe that we aren't lying."
Sherlock takes a deep breath and protests, "It's never twins."
Lestrade shrugs. "Apparently this time it is."
"How can there be no record of it? Nobody could hide such crucial informati-" he stops talking mid-word, while a scene comes back to his mind. He shuts his eyes close, and inside his memory he sees his brother standing in his living room, trying to hide anguish and concern. He relives their conversation as the words they exchanged echo in his mind.
/
"I'm here to give you a case..."
"National importance?"
"International."
/
Sherlock comes abruptly back to reality as a sudden realisation strikes him. He mutters, "Wait, what poison?"
Lestrade lifts a puzzled look at him. "'Scuse me?"
"What was the poison that killed her? Give me the lab results," he yells at the two policemen in the room, and Anderson disappears into the adjacent room, re-emerging a second later with a folder in his hands. He hands it to Sherlock without a word.
The detective skims the report searching for a particular substance in the victim's bloodstream, then he tilts his head backwards and closes his eyes, murmuring, "Mycroft."
The inspector scowls when he catches that name.
"What does your brother have to do with this suicide?"
"I have to go." Sherlock tosses the folder at him and rushes down the stairs. He makes a call while marching hastily down the street.
"I'm busy, dear brother. Try to call me on another day. Or another life," sighs an irritated voice on the other end of the line.
"Mycroft, I think I've just run up against the case you wanted to give me earlier," the younger Holmes urges him.
"I can't speak now, Sherlock."
The detective keeps pressing him, "I need more information about them. I need to know where she—"
"I said I can't speak, for God's sake," Mycroft interrupts him. "We've just found a mole in our system. I can't speak on the phone; I can't communicate through telegrams or letters, and I certainly cannot meet you in person right now. Everything is compromised, and I must sort it out. You are on your own. Do whatever it takes, but hurry. We are running out of time," he says cryptically and hangs up right away.
"No, Sherlock, wait." Lestrade has followed him in the street and runs to him in time to enjoy the puzzled expression on his face at the end of the call.
"You can't go now. We've barely even started."
Sherlock raises an arm to hail a cab and turns to him. "I'm done here. There's nothing of any importance."
"A woman lies dead inside that flat and her twin sister is missing," Lestrade objects stubbornly.
Sherlock shoots him a withering look. "I can assure you the worst is yet to come."
Baker Street
"That's impossible," Sherlock grumbles, bursting into 221B B some minutes later.
John looks away from the telly and sarcastically says, "Oh, look, he is in a good mood."
"How could she hide a sister and how could he hide that from me?" Sherlock cries out and drops his coat on the floor, ignoring that the coat rack is merely three feet away.
Giulia closes her book and glances at John. "Should we ask him who he's talking about?"
"No. Just act natural and let him blow off some steam," the doctor replies casually. He is rather accustomed to Sherlock's peculiar (and usually unjustified) fits of anger.
She stands up and grabs his coat to hang it on the rack, and a piece of paper falls out of a pocket and flits on the ground. She picks it up with a foxy smile.
"Sherlock, you've got a girlfriend and haven't breathed a single word about it?"
"A girlfriend?" John gapes, while Sherlock simply stares at her, clueless.
"Yes, a woman who leaves you messages and calls you dear or love," Giulia implies with a leer, waving in the air the note that fell off his pocket. "Only a woman could have such delicate handwriting."
He gazes at her with an indecipherable expression.
"Correct. What else can you infer from that piece of paper?"
She gives a second look at the few written lines.
"Overlooking the content—which looks like a love declaration—I'd say she had troubles with the pen." She points at the ink smudges on the paper.
"She used a fountain pen and was in a hurry," he clarifies.
She nods at that remark and immediately frowns.
"In that case, is she a teacher?"
"What?" Sherlock asks, blinking repeatedly.
"Well, maybe not a teacher, but surely a grammar nazi. You said she was in a hurry, and yet she took care of the punctuation on an informal note. Who would be so meticulous to put a semicolon and mind about commas if they are out of time? She must have done it as a natural reflex. That's why I presumed it was connected to her job." She shrugs, afraid of sounding too blunt about a personal matter.
"Actually, it might. Let me examine it." Sherlock storms to her side and snatches the paper from her hands.
"Seriously you don't know what she does for a living?"
"Did. And she wasn't my girlfriend. She is just the victim of my new case," he replies absent-mindedly.
Giulia turns pale, lifting a hand over her mouth. "So, you mean…"
"Yes, this is her suicidal note. I read it on the crime scene but couldn't find anything relevant."
"Of course you couldn't. This looks extremely personal and heartfelt. It was probably meant for her boyfriend, or husband, or lover," she suggests.
"Nothing like that. In all probability, it was for her twin sister," Holmes corrects her without even looking in her direction.
"Oh, poor girl," she whines. "And why did she kill herself?"
"I wondered the same when I was there, and I finally came up with the solution: she had no choice, she was an undercover agent of the British Secret Service."
Both John and Giulia stare at him open-mouthed, but before either of them has time to articulate a question, Sherlock anticipates their queries.
"How did I deduce she was a spy? Easy: she had a secret twin nobody knows anything about, apparently. Only the MI6 would have the means to wipe off all personal records of someone's existence. But there was one more clue: the poison she took doesn't officially exist, or at least, it isn't on the market. It is a new lethal mixture that the MI6 cooked up only a few months ago—more of an experiment. Lab analysis conducted by the police listed some of its components in her bloodstream."
"I won't ask how you can possibly know about that poison." John scowls at him.
"Not pertinent, right now, moving on. Thanks to the emergency pill that the Secret Service provided her to commit suicide, we know she worked for the intelligence. I know the twins were part of a terrorist group, thanks to the evidence collected by Anderson."
He makes a pause and mumbles, "I can't believe I've just said that. Anyway, Scotland Yard was monitoring Cathy's meetings with a terror cell, and they found evidence of plans for a terrorist attack in her flat."
He raises his gaze on his flatmates and sums up, "Here we are: two twins who work for the Secret Service and meet with a terror cell while spying on them. The only plausible explanation is that they infiltrated the group to thwart their plans."
"Alright, but why use a secret twin?" Giulia struggles to follow.
"Since the police had no clue about the twin until lab results came in, we can deduce that all security footage presumably shows only one person with the likeness of Cathy Baaral. The only reason they wouldn't participate in the meetings together is that they used to swap places without the terrorists knowing. They needed to be two and absolutely identical to pass for the same person," Sherlock explains. This is the first time he states his assumptions on the case out loud; he must admit that he sounds like a crazy conspiracy theorist. Yet, he doesn't doubt that he is right, and his brother's involvement only confirmed his hypothesis.
"Swap places? Are you saying that their whole mission was based on their secret sisterly bond?" Giulia keeps asking questions, striving to get to the bottom of the story. John, for his part, stays silent; he is used to not being invited to the 'deduction party'.
"In all likelihood. You've read the note that she left her sister. She wrote about a project, and it looks like they were working together on it. If you've been following, it shouldn't be too hard to piece it all together: twin secret agents, alleged terroristic affiliations, and a shared project that kept them so close that they became one... It's obvious, isn't it?" He cocks his head at her, an expectant expression on his face.
"But why swap places now and then?"
"Because, while one of them was staying with the group, her sister had the time and secrecy to report to the MI6: the perfect covert operation. But at some point, something went wrong. The terrorists must have got suspicious, and eventually, one of the sisters was caught red-handed. She tried to run away and finally took the poison created by the Secret Service to avoid falling into their hands," Sherlock concludes the narration of the events.
"And you figured it all out during your ride home?" Giulia gapes at him, astonished.
He shrugs nonchalantly as his phone trills a text alert. He looks down at the screen, grimaces, and puts it back in his pocket without typing a reply.
"It sounds like a spy movie, but I'll take it as a valid explanation. I didn't know secret agents were trained so hard on grammar, though," she notices.
Sherlock stares at her for a second, then springs to his feet. "You were right."
John goggles at him and finally speaks, "Can you please say that again?" He shifts his eyes to Giulia and whispers, "I'd never heard anything like that coming from his mouth."
Sherlock's phone receives another text, but he ignores it again and strides across the living room, thinking out loud, "Giulia said that her writing style could be connected to her job, and it is. Certainly not her occupation inside the intelligence, but the other one: the front her sister and she used when not in service. If we discover what it was, we can still save the other twin."
"Save her from whom?" Watson asks, bewildered.
"The terrorists, John," Holmes cries out in exasperation. "They found out the swap trick and surely know that one of the twins is dead. Now they're looking for the other one."
John sighs. "If the sisters are MI6, why don't you ask Mycroft for help?"
"He can't. He's busy with a mole in the system."
"Someone played him with his dodge," Giulia says thoughtfully.
Sherlock's phone signals a new message. Once again, the detective deliberately ignores it and keeps speaking.
"Let's think; she was about to die and took the trouble to care about punctuation in her note. She wasn't a teacher, though: too public of a job. She couldn't let her face be easily recognisable or be seen too often. She was on a secret mission, after all. Now, what kind of job would specifically require writing skills?"
His eyes distractedly land on the newspaper that John had left on the tea table a few hours before, after Giulia completed the crossword puzzle, and his face lights up.
"Oh, of course. That's how they used to leak information to the Secret Service: through articles and feature stories. Clever." He twirls around the room with a satisfied smirk. "John, find the nearest newsroom to this address." He shows him Lestrade's text with the crime scene details.
The doctor immediately turns his computer on while his phone trills a text alert. He types a reply right when the search is complete.
"Got it," and he reads the address aloud.
"Take your coats. We're heading there." Sherlock's words sound like an order from a commander.
"Will she come along with us, too?" John points at Giulia standing in the middle of the living room.
"I don't see why not. She just proved to be quite observant," Sherlock replies without a second thought and turns to her. "You aren't busy at the moment, are you?"
Giulia smiles timidly, but her eyes betray a perplexed look.
"Not all. I'll come with you. Just... Why are we going to an editorial office early in the night?"
"Because the twin sister we're looking for might be hiding there. She posed as a journalist."