by Paul Cornell
He’d swatted the questions away, claiming to be only human (meaning he wasn’t). He also claimed to know nothing about Hell, only that he was sure whoever was in charge knew what they were doing (interesting). He also said he knew very little about Sherlock Holmes, and nothing about the current killings (the first part of which was surely to let her know that the second part was untrue). As they’d lain there afterwards, she’d asked him to tell her about his life, in return for her tale in the restaurant. She’d mentally translated his lies. His Holmes, he said, was about to get more happy-go-lucky and more asexual. So darker and sexier, then. He’d come out with a few inverted barbs about the audience. She’d drifted to sleep to the sound of his voice lying to her.
She hadn’t intended to do this when she’d left home tonight. Had he somehow used his powers, whatever they were, to trick her into his bed? No. She’d wanted this. She’d initiated it. Having a one-night stand, or a fling or whatever this was going to turn out to be, was a lot easier without happiness. If she’d been capable of being happy, she might have worried about consequences, about unhappiness.
Somewhere on the carpet over there was a knotted condom containing, well, the cum of a deity. Ross was on the pill, more to help with her periods than anything else, but when he’d produced protection, she’d considered what she was dealing with and let him go for it. The mythology about that part of human-deity interaction was also pretty damn terrifying.
She was sure now that he was a real human man. She was also sure he was something much more than that. Had she ‘offered herself’ for information? She felt guilty, of course she did. She would never have been able to do something like this without guilt, and in her current situation she couldn’t even say she’d done this for fun. He’d wake up and leave immediately, wouldn’t he, throwing a few lies in her direction that she would see through right away? She had to make herself think about something else, about the shape of her ops board right now, to stop the self-hating accusations going round in her head. She was practised at that. How was she going to talk about this to Costain? She didn’t want to be the sort of person who deliberately hurt an ex. She didn’t have to tell him how she’d got these data points.
She realized Flamstead had opened his eyes and was considering her. ‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey.’ Which could not be a lie.
‘So, do you want to get some breakfast?’
‘Shall we call ahead for reservations?’
‘Er, I meant do you want some toast?’ She realized as she said it that he’d just declared that he didn’t want to stay for breakfast.
He must have seen the wince. ‘Oh dear.’ He stepped out of bed and stretched, scratched his balls. She wanted to find a way to test how he was feeling about her, about last night, that wasn’t a question. As she opened her mouth to struggle towards that, he kissed her, first gently, then, as she let him, passionately. ‘Don’t be calm,’ he said. ‘Feel agitated and distracted. What do you want this to be?’
‘I don’t know.’ She had trouble imagining a relationship with someone who couldn’t tell the truth, no matter how hard he was trying to communicate. She also couldn’t imagine a relationship without happiness for her to share. Her body wanted more of him, though. She wanted that calm too. She wanted the answers to her questions.
‘Well, then,’ he said. It was a non-answer that he was obviously practised at, but the smile that went with it completed the meaning. ‘Got any porridge?’ He wandered towards the kitchen and she watched his arse, feeling passionate and dispassionate all at once.
Ross got in for work only a couple of minutes late; Costain was already at the Portakabin. She found herself making immediate eye contact with him. She felt, ridiculously, like she’d been caught sneaking in. ‘I tried to call you last night,’ he said.
‘Well, you know, I was out with Flamstead. I got a load of data for the board.’ She had, too. She’d made a list in her notebook sitting in her car outside her flat. He’d asked if he could go back to bed, and she’d found she had no problem with leaving a god in her home. She hadn’t anything sensitive on the computer there, apart from the stuff that was to do with her dad, and if he wanted to look at that . . . well, he might suddenly decide to help, even. She had the feeling he wanted to help her. She didn’t want to betray his trust by doing anything weird and underhand like take that condom for Sefton to analyse. She’d left it for him to deal with. She realized that she’d drifted off for a second. Her body still felt like it had had a satisfying workout, then a very refreshing sleep.
She looked back to Costain and found he had a locked expression on his face, like he was keeping extreme control of his emotions. ‘I mean I tried to call you late.’
‘Well . . .’ She couldn’t find a response. None of his damn business. ‘OK, here’s that list.’ She started to reel off the points, writing them up ready for Sefton to arrive. She carefully listed every single thing she’d learned, not editing what might be important.
Costain frowned. ‘He said his version of Sherlock was going to get darker and . . . more sexual?’
That was his first question? Way to approach what he really wanted to know from out of left field. ‘Yeah. Well, he said the opposite, but that’s what he meant.’
‘I don’t know why they can’t leave well enough alone.’ Costain sounded actually angry. About a TV show. She would have laughed at that, she suspected, if she still found things funny. Or maybe she wouldn’t. She was hoping not to be cruel. Was he going to ask directly about her and Gilbert, or wasn’t he? ‘You think he’s this . . . god. This Trickster. Why do you trust anything he says?’
‘Because of a system of communication we—’
‘If he’s a trickster, isn’t he obviously setting you up for something?’
Like you did, she wanted to say. But he was right. She was aware that another shoe was, at some point, bound to drop. That was half the interest for her. With no happiness at stake, she didn’t feel like she was risking anything. ‘Right. Be interesting to find out what, eh?’
He turned away, frustrated. ‘I don’t know how to act, what to be, to treat you right,’ he said.
She could tell he meant it, and after all last night’s mental adjustments, the directness was actually refreshing, but it still annoyed her. ‘Don’t treat me like anything,’ she said.
He took a moment more, then straightened up, turned back to face her, in control once more. ‘Absolutely. We still on for the auction on Wednesday?’
She hoped this was all there was going to be to it. Good on him if it was. They were acting like colleagues again, pulling together while Quill was on leave. ‘Yeah, if you are.’
He nodded just as Sefton entered, looking grim. ‘I’ve put the word out about Jimmy,’ he said. He saw they didn’t know what he was talking about, and proceeded to tell them the terrible story of his morning so far.
Ross felt guilty all over again, for no good reason. They immediately started to call around some obvious places where Quill might be, and Ross, with a terrible feeling in her stomach, made sure that all the authorities who could search for him were doing so. Lofthouse called, full of apologies for just having caught up, and said she’d made sure everyone knew to look out for Jimmy. They’d hear the second anyone saw him. Finally, all three of them had to admit that they’d done everything they could and had to get on with today’s urgent business, which was to head to Lombard Street and begin their interviews with heads of security, as well as locating businesses with big safes. Costain made a gesture towards making the decision himself, but Ross could feel the sudden lack of leadership in the room. She quickly briefed Sefton on what she’d learned last night, and thankfully, distracted by Jimmy’s situation as he was, he didn’t ask for all the details in front of Costain.
As Costain drove them to Lombard Street, Sefton found himself taking comfort in their preparations. Jimmy had taught all of them to work outside their specialities. It was teamwork, sharing the burden, that saved th
eir mutual sanity. It should have been pretty obvious that if one of them was going to lose it, it would be Quill, the one for whom responsibility meant he couldn’t lean as much on the others. Especially after Hell. Who could come back from that and try to lead a normal life again? If they could find him, perhaps this would turn out to be the best thing that could have happened for Jimmy. Perhaps.
Sefton got a call from Ballard, who’d just walked out of remand, a free man, Lofthouse’s deal having been officially made and accepted. Sefton put it on speaker. ‘I owe all of you a great deal,’ Ballard said, ‘and I will repay.’ Sefton got the feeling, somehow, that he was laughing at them. He wished he felt able to ask Ballard if he had anything to help find Jimmy, but he didn’t trust him enough for that. He instead outlined, without giving the whole game away, their current operation. Ballard said he perhaps had something that could locate a particular individual. That, thought Sefton, might be useful for any one of this gang, or for Watson, whose absence was still a closed book to them, but also might especially help find Quill. He’d be in touch.
Lombard Street wasn’t that long, a narrow grey street of imposing buildings with arcade lanes of shops leading off on both sides. It turned left off Moorgate, just past Bank Tube station, and swiftly became Fenchurch Street. They’d agreed that, given the flexibility they’d previously shown, the killers would probably settle for the death of a Holmes anywhere within a quarter-mile. There was a Pret a Manger and a Sainsbury’s Local, lunch places for office workers, fashion and fitness stores. There were also still three major banks with offices nearby, one with a branch entrance on the street itself, the others with less obvious offices back along the side streets, and a corporate finance company, which also, they’d found out, had a safe.
Costain parked on the narrow one-way street in front of doors that said they were in use at all times but led to a brownfield site, and propped his logbook in the window to deter traffic wardens. It was a cool autumn day. Sefton registered sunlight as he got out of the car, looked at Costain and Ross’s grim faces, and wondered if they would find hope anywhere.
They split up for the interviews. Sefton went to the corporate finance company and talked to a smart fortysomething woman called Emily Jacobs, who had, to his surprise, after having received his call, read forward in the Holmes stories and knew exactly what he’d be looking for from ‘The Stockbroker’s Clerk’. ‘I agree that the “watchman” who gets beaten to death in the story sounds most like a modern-day security guard. I called round all our security personnel personally this morning, those on shift and those off, and I have one who thinks he might have once gone to a fancy-dress party as Sherlock Holmes. He asks does that count?’
‘Let’s assume it does. Being a security guard, he’s not going to have a criminal record, right?’ Although for their victims to have a criminal record seemed a preference rather than a necessity for their killers, it was a detail that might serve to make one victim more attractive than another.
‘Well, no actual record,’ said Jacobs. There was a ‘but’ she couldn’t say out loud, but communicated to him with pursed lips.
‘Can I talk to him?’ said Sefton.
Johnny Horner had a carefully tended quiff, sideburns that showed he’d had a haircut after getting a tan, and described himself as ‘a little bit wa-hey, a little bit woo’, the geezer character straight out of The Fast Show. He’d been in this job two weeks, and his attitude, an in-your-face and rather forced cheekiness, made Sefton wonder if his employers were regretting the hire and waiting for the end of his six months. Background checks revealed nothing dodgy, though. When asked, Johnny had a lot of big talk about knowing the bad lads when he was a kid, and that was probably true.
Sefton checked in with his colleagues, who’d found just one other potential Sherlock, an upstanding citizen in the rather dull way of most security personnel. They’d agreed earlier that actually putting a deerstalker on someone and deliberately making their own target was unethical. So, all in all, Costain decided Horner was their best option as bait.
Costain brought over a map with the locations of various large safes marked on it. Ross arrived, and together they got Jacobs talking to the owners of a small, and relatively lightly defended, investment broker’s nearby. The company owned, as a relic of their building’s history, a truly gigantic safe. Horner, to give him credit, was immediately up for their plan. He and the other potential Holmes would be given leave until next Thursday, indeed ordered not to come anywhere near the street. Then, on Thursday morning, the main investigation having liaised with Costain’s team in a truly enormous stake-out operation, Horner would take his place as guard near that safe. He was to tell everyone on social media that he was off for a couple of days, and exactly when he’d be back.
‘Cushy job,’ he said.
‘With a very brave bit at the end,’ said Sefton.
Horner shook his head. ‘If you catch this nutter, then I’m just looking out for my mates. Besides, nothing’s going to happen to me with all you lot hiding in every corner, is it?’
Sefton looked awkwardly at the other two. ‘Tempting fate, we call that,’ he said. He didn’t add that in their business there might actually be a fate to tempt. They said their goodbyes to their new allies, returned to their car and, as they’d been reflexively doing all this time, once more checked their messages.
Nobody had seen Quill.
Quill kept wanting to explain to someone exactly what he was doing. It could, he was sure, look a bit unusual to someone on the outside. He’d kept his phone switched off after he’d abandoned the car, and made sure to change as soon as possible out of the clothes he’d left the house in, into the civvies he kept handy for just such a moment as this. They’d find him if he switched the phone on, even just for a moment to look at Jessica’s picture. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault; he kept having to remind himself of that. She hadn’t been deliberately getting in his way, had she? Had she? No, he couldn’t believe that of her. This Moriarty he was chasing, he might be some sort of cosmic power, but Quill didn’t think he could have got to Sarah. He’d realized, a couple of hours after he’d left the car behind, and was walking past White Hart Lane, on his way into town, that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep in a bed tonight. If he used his cards to get a hotel room, or took cash out, they’d be able to locate him. Still, a night’s discomfort wasn’t too much to ask of someone who’d gone out on a limb to solve history’s biggest crime.
He was still surprised by how small London was. Even keeping off the obvious ways, where they might have uniforms or doctors looking for him, the walk into the centre of town only took four hours. It was teatime before he found himself looking up at Centre Point. He stopped at the Starbucks on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street, and felt the first nip of cold through his coat and waited.
Yes, he could hear them, distantly, the sounds that had pursued him since he was in the car. They were trying to find him, slipping through the narrow lanes between these dark buildings. The sounds were of a carriage driven by urgently spurred horses. Amazing, to think that was possible, to think that only a couple of years back if someone told him they were being followed by such a thing, he’d have said they were mad.
The way the buildings were changing, revealing their real faces to the Sight, that was indicative too. He could see Victorian detail even in Centre Point, as if it was a gigantic rookery of slum apartments. Up into the sky went the washing lines from it out to other great buildings, the sky itself brown like a Hogarth cartoon, full of flying scraps, the contents of buckets, the vapours of noxious exhalations, disease.
Had he ever left Hell?
He realized it would be such a relief if he hadn’t. It would let all this be OK. It would mean only he was at risk. It would mean all this awful hope had just been a trick. No, though, he could feel the Sight telling him this wasn’t Hell. Not yet. This was just a place that was becoming more like it. These opinions he had about what was going on, what he
had to do, they weren’t a cry for help; they were who he was now, and they were concrete, they could be proven. He was going to do it. But those hoofbeats were getting closer all the time.
He would soon have to find somewhere to spend the night. That didn’t matter very much. All that mattered was the pursuit, him of it and it of him. He tried to explain all this to the old lady standing beside him, but she moved off before he got a few sentences in. He held in the anger he felt at her, and turned to walk again through the maze the city was becoming.
EIGHTEEN
Sarah Quill hadn’t shared her husband’s often changing but usually low opinion of Tony Costain. He’d always seemed to her like the sort of bloke who was trying to project all sorts of things about himself because he couldn’t face his own vulnerability, a vulnerability she’d found herself liking. Now, his presence in her home was especially welcome. He’d brought his colleagues over to interview her, to go over once again any details Kevin might have missed.
‘There was something he wasn’t telling me,’ she said as they sat in her living room. She could hear Jessica on the baby monitor, talking to herself upstairs, talking about Daddy. ‘Something that was getting to him. He kept talking about Laura moving to London, as if he’s so scared of this place now . . . Well, I don’t blame him. But it’s OK for millions of people.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ross, whose calm surface had come as a surprise, such a change from the intensity of the last time Sarah had seen her. She had also been altered by this insane job the four of them did. ‘We all got the feeling he wanted to speak up about something.’
‘We should have given him the chance,’ said Sefton.
They went over everything, managing to get a pretty accurate idea of what was in the bag Quill had put together and hidden from her. ‘If he calls,’ said Ross finally, ‘please tell him we want to listen.’ Sarah had to close her eyes, resenting the implication that she hadn’t told him that, though she doubted Ross had meant it that way.
