Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (9 page)

‘Just this,’ he’d said, gesturing to the room around him. ‘No idea as to motive. No idea if it’s actually anything to do with your . . . two murders now.’

‘It looks indicative, specific vandalism and that knife, maybe taunting us.’ Quill could see what she couldn’t, that she was walking in blood. ‘How did you get on to
this?’

Quill had glanced to Sefton and considered, like he giddily considered so many career-ending decisions these days, telling the truth. ‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to
say.’ One of the museum officials had arrived, and Clarke had had to deal with that. She’d asked a sergeant to show Quill’s team what they had, and they’d all had a bit of a
kip in the back of the cars on the way to the first of the crime scenes, in Brixton.

Sefton had given that house a quick once-over, using his pendulum and his nose to search for any sign of spilled silver or knotted gold, any hint of something that could only be sensed by those
with the Sight. He’d found nothing. There’d been no sign of a struggle, the sergeant had said. Christopher Lassiter had trusted his killer enough to calmly have tea with him, having let
him into the house. It had almost certainly been someone he knew.

Then they’d been taken to see the body, which had also yielded nothing from their side of the street. Lassiter had lain on the gurney looking oddly tense, his muscles locked, a look of
strain on his face. Quill had wondered if he himself had looked like that when he’d been in this same situation, had imagined once again Sarah seeing him like that. Lassiter’s body had
had its every muscle paralysed, the medical examiner had explained to them. Cause of death was asphyxiation as a result, which had taken about half an hour. Had Lassiter lain on the floor, watching
his killer write that word on the wall? The poison had probably been curare. There were no puncture marks on the body, and the main investigation had found tiny pieces of what looked like the shell
of a pill in the teeth. It might have been incompletely dissolved in hot tea.

‘We were working on the basis,’ said the sergeant, ‘that the killer or killers were trying to recreate the first murder in
A Study in Scarlet
. The second crime scene
supports that, as you’ll see.’

In the Conan Doyle story, Quill was told, it had been a pill and had been identified by Holmes as being ‘a South American alkaloid’. The tea hypothesis was based on two cups that had
been left on the draining board in the kitchen, both immaculately cleaned. No DNA other than the victim’s had been found at the entire crime scene. None from friends, even. The matter of the
blood, though, was ongoing. Lassiter had, in recent years it seemed, lived an isolated existence. Had he watched, dying, even that careful washing-up? Had he gasped and fought for air, perhaps
expecting the good life he’d lived would get him to Heaven? Almost certainly not, not these days.

Then, with thankfully more sleep in more cars in between, the team had been brought here. It was now late afternoon, dark outside, and they were in a hotel next to Euston Station, in a
second-floor room that was utterly bland. Beside the open window lay the body of a man in the uniform of a cleaner, with a deep stab wound in his left side. On the wall above the body, as at the
Brixton crime scene, the word ‘Rache’ was written in blood.

‘The time frame,’ said Ross, ‘puts this murder at ten p.m.,
before
. . . I’m going to call what was done to Holmes a murder. So the sequence goes Brixton, here,
Baker Street. If they
are
associated, and that’s a big assumption, noted as such, maybe the first two killings are to somehow, I don’t know, power up that blade that killed
Holmes?’

‘Using sacrifices associated with Holmes to create a weapon to kill Holmes,’ said Sefton. ‘That feels right, and in my area of study, that often means it could
be
right.’

‘There are no more murders in
A Study in Scarlet
. So if that is what the MO was, this is over.’

Quill squatted to look at the very real body and read from the report that the crime scene examiner had handed him. ‘Stabbed through the heart. This is almost precisely the location of the
second murder in
A Study in Scarlet
, which wasn’t the case with the first killing. In the book, that took place in Lauriston Gardens, a real street that is a lot closer to the Brixton
Road. The cause of death, though, in both cases, looks to be precisely the same as in the book.’

‘So the deaths don’t have to be correct in every detail,’ said Sefton.

‘The difference could be indicative,’ said Ross. ‘Why were the killer or killers content with the general area for the first murder, but were so specific with this
one?’

‘No sign of a murder weapon,’ said Quill.

‘Could be the same one as killed Holmes,’ said Ross. ‘But why would that be necessary when the first murder was by poison?’

‘They’re waiting until we’re done before they remove the body. Nothing was taken from the room. The window was open when the body was found.’

‘Any connection between the victims?’ asked Costain.

‘The main investigation hasn’t unearthed anything yet. This is Richard Duleep, forty-six, lived in Rickmansworth, wife and three kids, a few counts of petty theft and aggro when he
was younger, seen as a bit of a risk by the cleaning company, but they say he’d obviously turned over a new leaf. His workmates say he was just cleaning the room like always. Guest checked
out hours before.’

Costain looked out of the window. ‘The bird shit on the ledge is smeared. Someone got a ladder up here, right?’

‘That’s the line the main investigation are pursuing.’

‘That’s bizarre,’ said Ross, ‘and also maybe indicative. If you’re aiming to just kill someone, anyone, in this building, then why not simply walk in, pick a floor
and wait? Or break in downstairs or something?’

‘You need time to write the word,’ said Sefton.

‘Yeah, but to actually bring a ladder, to do it in full view . . .’ Ross was shaking her head, annoyed at the world.

‘We’ll get access to nearby CCTV camera footage after they’ve examined it,’ said Quill. ‘We’re told they have a clear view of the front of the
building.’

‘If you’re going to climb up a bloody ladder right in view of everybody,’ said Costain, ‘there’ll be witnesses. We’re going to find out what suspect or
suspects looks like. Unless they’re invisible, which is always a possibility.’

Sefton was looking up at the word scrawled on the wall. ‘There are spatters between this and the body. I think this time that’s the victim’s blood.’

‘Fits with the book,’ said Ross. ‘In the story, the killer had a nosebleed at the first murder and wrote on the wall in his own blood. Then he used the victim’s blood the
second time. He didn’t have to worry about DNA evidence.’

‘Spoilers,’ said Costain. Which still got no reaction from Ross. ‘Here, could this be that obvious? Could the killer be the ghost of whoever it is in the book? He’s got a
motive for killing Holmes.’

Sefton considered for a second. ‘I don’t know what the name of that character is, so I don’t think he’s anywhere near well known enough for London to remember him. From
what I remember, none of the three adaptations filming in town are doing
A Study in Scarlet
, or maybe that’d be different.’

‘His name’s Jefferson Hope,’ said Ross, ‘and I agree, but he goes on the ops board.’ She said it like she was answering Sefton.

Quill found himself looking once again at the body. This Richard Duleep was in Hell now, experiencing the torments Quill had experienced – more, because Quill was pretty sure he’d
been spared some of it. It didn’t matter how kind Richard had been to his wife and three kids, how much he’d reformed; he’d fallen victim to the ultimate postcode lottery. It
seemed almost bizarre to
care
who’d killed him.

He looked up at the others, thinking he’d just blurt it out, share the burden. Seeing their faces stopped him. There was no help to be had. He’d just be putting weights round their
necks. He made himself play his role once more. ‘Let’s take all this back to the Hill.’

They got back to the Portakabin late in the day. As soon as they entered, Ross went to the ops board, which was now bare, the details of Operation Dante having been unpicked
from it. She pinned a piece of blank paper on the wall beside it, took a marker and offered it to Quill. ‘Name of the operation and list of operational aims.’ She was aware that she was
being brusque with a senior officer, but she was getting enormously pissed off with Quill’s strained silences. It wasn’t as if he was the only one suffering from what had happened
during the Ripper case. She herself had lost the ability to feel happiness, but beyond that, her father was in Hell. Previously she’d got slight comfort from him being able to make desperate
attempts to visit her. Unfortunately, those had been discovered, and ceased. She shared, however, Sefton’s conviction that they had here a new case that could get them working together like
they’d used to, though maybe not all of them. Costain could piss off outside London, where he wouldn’t have to worry about the Sight, for all she cared.

Quill paused before taking the marker. He’d sometimes indicated, after he’d had a few, that he had occasionally suffered from depression. He’d talked about their new vocation
as a revelation that there was a point to life after all, as if there could be a cure, but this current malaise went further than anything she’d seen from him.

She now had a vague idea of how he felt. She sometimes needed to find logical reasons to do everyday things like choosing a different shirt in the morning. Her problem, however, was specific.
Quill these days seemed to keep getting stuck thinking there was something he should do or say, decide not to say it, then have to be forced back into the moment. He needed someone to keep trying
to jump-start him.

Quill caught her look and finally nodded. He went to the paper and began to write.

‘Generic,’ said Costain, ‘but yeah. We can’t bundle killing a fictional character with the other two murders, not if we want a jury to keep a straight face. What are we
going to call it?’

Quill picked up a piece of card and looked at it. ‘One of you,’ he said, and held it in their direction.

Sefton took the pen and the card from him. ‘Something bloody positive,’ he said. Then he started to write, turned and pinned the name of their new operation at the top of the ops
board.

OPERATION GAME.

‘What, like . . . the game Operation?’ said Costain.

‘I couldn’t call it “Afoot”, could I?’

‘It’ll do,’ said Quill.

They began, between them, to build the board. Ross felt herself relax as they did so, and she was sure Sefton and Costain felt the same way. They put up pictures of the victims, including, taken
from the Internet, a Sidney Paget illustration of Holmes in his deerstalker. They linked a photo of the Holmes murder weapon to that image, with a close-up of the detail on the blade, and a picture
of a generic pill to that of Lassiter. What was inscribed on the blade had been the easiest detail to find: the stick men were from another Holmes story, ‘The Dancing Men’, where
they’d been a sort of code. In the story, the messages were much longer, and when translated were a mixture of imploring stalker notes and threats. Ross had found some complete alphabets for
the figures online, but they differed, and having consulted the story itself, she found there weren’t enough letters given to construct a definitive version. However, one of the online
versions had yielded a translation for what was on the blade that made sense, and now she wrote the word on the board beside the weapon:
Ghostkiller
. She would have added as a suspect a
picture of the Holmes expert who’d written the online alphabet, but he’d died in New Zealand fifteen years ago.

The word ‘Rache’ was pinned up and connected to the two non-fictional victims. Ross printed out images of the lines between the bullet holes in the wall, the gaps in the bookcase,
the gaps in the letters, the pinpricks in the eyes, the melted head, the spiral on the hearth, the chalk doorway, the astronomical charts and photo, and the envelope it had arrived in. The charts
had been interesting: a map of the heavens circa the 1960s, the sort of thing you might buy in a junk shop; a chart of the solar system that was similar, with a 1973 date on the copyright; a
picture of a very general star field, with index numbers at the edges that presumably indicated what part of the sky this was. She pinned photos of all of them, and of the message on the back of
that particular picture, onto the board. She sent the photo and envelope to be fingerprinted. Costain printed out pictures of Jefferson Hope, as drawn on what looked like a cigarette card,
Moriarty, a drawing from one of the books, General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher and added them, with a look on his face that was continually hoping to get either a laugh or an order to bin them,
to a suspect line above all the rest.

Then, more seriously, he added a picture of the assistant curator, with her name, Ann Stanley, under it. ‘She was there alone,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t just trust her
version.’

Ross found herself wanting to nod, but made herself not do so. Any positive gesture in his direction could be the start of a slow slide towards him wheedling his way back under her guard. She
knew what he was capable of. She put up a blank card with the question ‘Watson?’ on it. She ran a line down separating the Holmes murder and the other two, because a connection had yet
to be found, and Costain had to divide up his ‘suspects’ as a result. He gave no indication of being annoyed at that. ‘We have two killings like those in Holmes’s
stories,’ she said, ‘and one that isn’t. That’s got to be the main indicator here. Let’s not start trying to make the death of Holmes
into
a Holmes
story.’