Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  Had he been followed to Peter’s house? Would Peter be attacked and Sarah taken while Marcus was away from them? It must be wonderful to be as sure of his own invulnerability as the marvellously fictional Sherlock Holmes! Wasn’t he ever afraid? Afraid of pain, of failure, of letting people down? Whatever future scripts said, perhaps he should make him human, frightened and lonely sometimes, full of doubts. Or was that not what people wanted to know? Maybe that was what the drugs were for? Conan Doyle had included that, so the script writers had too, but only rarely.

  He was at the taxi company offices. There were several people around, at least four of whom glanced at him as he pulled the door open and went in.

  Five minutes later he walked out with the stuffed giraffe in his attaché case, its legs folded up and its neck bent a little. It was a handsome creature, very carefully stitched and with a benign, almost smiling face.

  He looked left and right. He recognized no one from five minutes before, but he still declined the taxi that slowed questioningly as he stood on the curb. Instead, he walked a few blocks and stopped a cab at random.

  He gave the driver directions, then changed them after half a mile. He watched the numbers of the cars behind him. He saw the same one even after the change of direction. He changed again. Was he safer in a taxi, or walking? Could he find a place where a vehicle could not follow him? Go through a shop and come out on a different street? He stopped at a large department store with three entrances, and went in to mingle with the crowd. Would they expect him to go out at the far side? What if he doubled back and went out the way he came in?

  No. Better to cross the street and catch a cab going in the opposite direction. With this traffic, anyone following him could not turn in less than a mile or so.

  He arrived at Peter’s house without seeing the taxi with the blue advert. Had he imagined it? He was becoming neurotic. What if this giraffe was nothing more than it seemed: a much-loved toy?

  Then why ransack a hotel room? And who was Maria Waterman?

  He was welcomed with some relief, even though Sarah and Peter seemed to have been getting along rather well, playing dominoes, at which Sarah was surprisingly good. She told Marcus that she had won twice.

  Her eyes lit up with pleasure when she saw Raffa and she hugged him tightly before telling him gravely that she was sorry they had to unpick him, but she promised to sew him up again afterwards, and it wouldn’t hurt.

  “You will be careful, won’t you?” she asked a little self-consciously. She knew perfectly well that Raffa was a toy, but they had shared many secrets, and right at the moment, he was the one fixed point in her universe.

  “Of course I will,” Marcus promised. “And we will stitch him up again straight away.”

  She nodded, then stood still, biting her lip as she watched Marcus take the nail scissors from Peter and very carefully snip the threads that held Raffa’s middle closed.

  Gradually he pulled out the tightly packed stuffing. More and more was piled upon the table. There were no packets of powder, no bags of diamonds, nothing but white, fluffy cotton, or kapok.

  Sarah was watching him, her fear palpable in the air. Could this be some hideous joke—a warning that next time it would be a living creature, not a toy? He found himself hating these people with an intensity he had not felt in years.

  Then his fingers touched something hard. He felt round it. A battery of some kind? It was small and flat, like one of the dominoes they had been playing with.

  He looked up at Peter, watching him. Then he pulled it out.

  Peter let out a sigh of relief. “That’s a flash drive.”

  “What?”

  “A flash drive,” Peter repeated. “It can have masses of information on it. You can put entire bookshelves on one of these things. Reams of pictures.” He glanced at Sarah. “May we read it, please? I think it is what the men who took your mother are looking for.”

  She nodded, her eyes never leaving the small piece of plastic.

  “Thank you.” Peter walked over to his computer and put the flash drive into the slot. He clicked the icon that came up on the screen, and in a few moments, a picture appeared.

  It was a still from the classic film, Casablanca, black and white, Bergman and Bogart. To Marcus, the perfect movie. With all the millions Hollywood spent these days, all the action, the color, the special effects, no one had ever come close to it. Superb supporting actors, inspired lighting, brilliant sets, great quotes: “Play it, Sam.” “In all the gin joints, in all the towns . . .” Even the soundtrack, “As Time Goes By”?

  “It doesn’t look right,” Peter said quietly.

  Marcus brought his attention back to the present, and looked more closely. Should there be buttons down the front of Bergman’s dress? He had seen the picture scores of times and he did not recall them. Of course, he had always concentrated on her face, the calm lines and the inner turbulence of spirit, but these caught his attention. They never had before.

  Experimentally, Peter put the cursor on the top one and clicked. Nothing.

  He tried the next one—and to Marcus’s amazement, the scene faded and something quite different appeared.

  It was one column of names and then several columns of numbers. Some appeared to be dates, and recurred several times, others were in a column headed by the abbreviation for Swiss francs. The second column appeared to contain numbers that were never repeated. The last one was letters and numbers intermixed.

  “How’d you do that?” Marcus demanded.

  “Remember that friend of mine who coached you on computers?” They’d been doing one of their rare non-Sherlock films together, about a computer hacker. “Well, he’s a good friend.”

  Marcus peered at the screen. “Are those bank accounts?” A hell of a lot more valuable than a giraffe filled with heroin, if the numbers were to be believed. “There’s hundreds of millions of pounds worth here.

  “And the account passwords.” He and Peter stared at each other.

  “Is this important?” piped up the child, forgotten at his knee.

  “This is very . . . important indeed.” He did not want to spell it out in front of Sarah, but for this kind of money there were people who would take a life—any number of lives—without hesitation.

  “So we can give it to them? And get Mummy back?”

  Marcus looked at Peter, then put his arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “Yes.”

  “We have to give it to them, Sherlock.” There was a bitter humor in Peter’s voice. “But I think we should make a copy of it first.”

  “It won’t show, will it? I wish we could make it just burn up, as soon as this thing is over.”

  Peter frowned, his thoughts faraway. “What if we could make it self-destruct, one piece at a time?”

  Marcus looked at him. “What are you thinking, Pe—Watson?” he corrected himself at the last minute.

  “I can give it to my friend, who will know what to do with it. And he was telling me about a program for a self-destruct, say ten percent at a time, that can be triggered from a distance. When we do that, we stitch it back in Raffa, and give Raffa to them, in return for Maria Waterman. If they want to bargain, or double-cross us in any way, we have a tool to bargain back with. We’ll delete it.”

  “Won’t your friend need the flash drive?”

  “I’ll see if he can set it up just with the copy.”

  “Good. Then get on with it. When you’re finished, Sarah and I will go back to the hotel and wait for them to contact us. Thank you, Pe . . . Watson.”

  Peter gave him a wry look, but he said nothing more. He went to the telephone and spent a quarter of an hour speaking very quietly to someone he apparently knew well.

  Meanwhile Marcus carefully put most of the stuffing back inside Raffa. One thing he had thought to do was save the thread with which he was originally stitched, or more accurately, with which the person had stitched him after the flash drive had been placed inside him. It was very close indeed to the
original. Would they look closely enough to notice any difference? It was a linen thread, very strong. They might find which seam had been undone. He should unpick another seam, perhaps a long one, like his neck or leg, and use that to re-stitch the one they would look at.

  He explained to Sarah what he was doing, and why, and she nodded again. Raffa was a stuffed toy, and yet he felt almost as if he were poking the needle into a live creature. He did it very carefully, mimicking exactly the depth and distance of the stitches already there.

  “You won’t hurt him,” Sarah said gently. “He doesn’t feel, you know.” It was difficult for her to say. To her, Raffa was real.

  “I know,” he answered her, raising his eyes from the stitching for a moment. “But I want it to be exactly like the seam they made, so they won’t see the difference.”

  “Is that why you used the same thread? What about his neck? It will be different.”

  “I’m hoping they won’t look at that so closely, at least to begin with. Later, they will know, because if they don’t give your mother back, we will delete . . . rub out . . . part of their flash drive every time they refuse. We just don’t want them to know that straight away.”

  Peter’s computer finished the copying, and he took out the tiny slip of plastic and handed it to Marcus, who worked the little thing deep into Raffa’s insides. When the giraffe was sewn up again, and he looked exactly as he had before, Marcus said goodbye to Peter.

  “You need to take the copy to your friend in . . . wherever he is . . . and let me know if it’s gone according to plan.” Marcus did not add any more. He wanted Sarah to believe it was all planned for, and safe—that Sherlock Holmes would never fail. It was Marcus St. Giles who needed Peter Cauliffe to know where he was, and have a backup, just in case.

  Also it would be better if nothing appeared to have changed since the threat was made. Whoever it was who had taken Maria Waterman knew perfectly well that he was merely an actor who happened to have played the role of Holmes rather well, or at any rate, rather successfully—from somebody else’s script.

  “We will go into the dining room and have afternoon tea,” he said as they walked through the foyer.

  “I don’t want tea,” she replied.

  “Neither do I,” he agreed. “But we should have it, nevertheless. We need them to know that we are here, and ready to do business. And I would very much rather be where lots of people can see us. It is safer.”

  “Oh,” she said in a very small voice. She grasped onto his sleeve again.

  “Do you like chocolate cake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you might. So do I. Not very good for you, but we need a treat, don’t you think?”

  She nodded.

  They found a table and sat Raffa, in the attaché case, on the chair between them. Marcus ordered tea, and two slices of chocolate cake, with icing. He could see that she was frightened. Honestly, he was frightened too. The price of failure in this was infinitely higher than anything he had imagined when he began.

  They must talk about something. He could not let her just sit here in silence, trying to pretend she was not terrified, and imagining what might be happening to her mother, and what in the end she would do alone, in a country where she knew no one. The guilt she would feel for failing would destroy her.

  What would the real Sherlock Holmes have talked about? Nothing. He did not deal with children, except the Baker Street Irregulars, and they were not well brought-up little girls. They were boys, and street-wise urchins at that.

  “Do you like to read?” he asked.

  She finished her mouthful of chocolate cake. “Of course I do.”

  “What’s your favorite book?”

  “Other than your stories?”

  “Other than those, yes.”

  “A book of poems by Edward Lear. It was my mummy’s when she was little. And my granny’s before that.”

  For a moment he was totally lost, then a flash of memory came to his rescue.

  “Ah, yes. Lots of limericks. Are there any drawings in your book?”

  “Drawings?”

  “Yes, of flowers and things.”

  “No, there are rhymes and stories.” She looked puzzled.

  He was struggling. He took a piece of paper out of his notebook and a pen, and he drew a picture of Lear’s as he remembered it. It was a mock botanical name—“nasty-creature-crawluppia.” He made the picture appropriately horrible, then passed it to her.

  She took it, and giggled with pleasure. “I’ve never seen that before. I’d remember.”

  “He was a real artist, you know, as well as writing nonsense verses. He painted beautiful watercolors of South Africa.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” He fished for words and recollections of Lear’s verses, and recaptured enough to amuse her for quite a while. Some of them she knew and recited with him. The waitress came and Marcus paid the bill.

  A few moments later she returned with a receipt—and a note.

  Trying to keep his hands steady, Marcus read it. He knew Sarah was watching him almost without blinking.

  “They have your mother, and will exchange her for Raffa,” he told her. “They are somewhere very close, probably in this room where they can see us, so sit still. Let us keep our composure.”

  “The game is afoot,” she whispered, her eyes locked on his.

  “It is indeed. But we must make sure that she is all right before we give them Raffa.”

  She nodded, just a tiny movement of her head.

  He found himself, ridiculously, not wanting to give up the stuffed giraffe. If anything had happened to her mother, it was the only thing she had left of her past life, apart from a few clothes she would soon grow out of.

  “We must make sure,” he repeated, taking his pen out of his pocket and writing on the note itself. ‘We will give you Raffa when we know Maria Waterman is safe and well.’ He gave it to the waitress, along with a couple of one-pound coins, and asked her to return it to the sender. His heart was beating so hard he felt as if his body were shaking with it. His hands were clammy.

  “Yes sir,” she said obediently, and took it away.

  Marcus wanted to say something to Sarah to comfort her, but his mouth was so dry he could barely speak. This was the worst stage fright he had ever had. Of course it was! It wasn’t a critical opinion of his performance of a play at stake, it was a woman’s life, and a child’s happiness.

  How strange the world was—everyone around them was sipping tea and talking normally, exactly as if nothing of importance were happening. But perhaps they were making deals that would change fortunes, meeting their illicit lovers, or saying goodbye for the last time.

  The note came back. ‘Give us Raffa, or we start hurting the mother.’

  With a trembling hand, he answered. ‘We know what’s in it. If you hurt her we will delete the first three names from your list, along with the account numbers. The second time you hurt her, or delay any more, we will take the next three. If you look at the stitching on Raffa, you will see that it has been replaced. This is not an idle threat.’

  He passed it back to the waitress. Please God this would work. His mouth was too dry to swallow, and if he took some tea it would choke him.

  He looked at the child on the other side of the table.

  “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “What is inside Raffa is worth millions of pounds. They want it very badly. I told them that if they hurt your mother, I will make the flash drive delete a few of the names and numbers they need. Watson is making it so it will do that. He’s very clever that way.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. Did she believe him?

  “Tell me about Wayne,” he asked. He realized that it mattered to him that this man who was going to marry her mother was honest and kind. What he did and how much he earned were unimportant; he must be kind to the child, he must like her, as much as if she had been his own.

  He asked questions to keep her
mind busy, all kinds of questions about the man, but the more she told him, the less did he like what he heard. By the time the waitress approached them again, he was almost as concerned about Wayne as he was about Maria Waterman’s safety.

  The telephone buzzed against his chest. He fished it out and saw a text from Peter: Mission accomplished. He went light-headed with relief.

  Sarah was watching him, looking very pale, her clenched hands on the table.

  “Watson’s done his part,” he told her. “Now we must wait for them to reply. Don’t worry, they will. They want what is inside Raffa just as much as we want your mother. And we can destroy it any time we want to.”

  “Will you destroy it even if we get Mummy back again?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid we will have to. They would do a great deal of damage with it.”

  “Will they know? That you can destroy it?”

  “They do now.”

  She tried to smile, but it did not really work.

  He reached across the table and put his hand over hers, just for a moment. It was a very un-Holmes-like thing to have done, but he was not sorry. When she was older, and looked back on this, who would she think he was?

  The waitress returned with another note.

  Marcus took it and read it almost at a glance. They agreed, naming a restaurant which would be open until at least midnight. They would meet there and exchange the hostage for the ransom. The restaurant was in the theater district. Not good: he might be recognized. He had played in many of them, and his face was known worldwide as Sherlock Holmes. He wrote down the name of an alternative restaurant, less fashionable, where he might pass unnoticed. He tipped the waitress handsomely, and asked her to return with the reply.

  He and Sarah waited in silence until it came. It was a jolt, and a relief.

  “The game is on,” he told her, then looked at what she was wearing. “Do you have other clothes with you? A pretty dress?”

  “Yes, in my room.”

  “Let’s put you into that. I will go up with you, and wait in your mother’s room while you change. I’m not going to leave you alone.” He hoped she would not argue. They had pushed the kidnappers to the limit. They would offer no mercy they did not have to. He could delete everything from the flash drive, but then he would have no bargaining power left. He was bitterly aware of that.