Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (10 page)

‘You know,’ said Sefton, ‘one of the Continuing Projects Team was called Watson. The memory of him is missing like the ghost of this Watson is missing. Can anyone think of
another Watson?’

A quick look at Wikipedia confirmed they could. ‘I’m relieved these days,’ said Costain, ‘when it turns out there
are
still coincidences.’

As they were working, Quill got an email through from DI Clarke’s office. The crime scene examiner had decided the wax head could have been melted, by a sufficiently intense flame, in five
minutes, so that didn’t give them any help with the time frame. They looked at the plans and found that the chalk doorway would lead into the stairwell of the building next door, which one
could exit without setting off an alarm. So if the killer had had the same resources Ballard did, they had an obvious means of escape.

After they’d finished, they stepped back and looked at what they had. So much noise. Not unusual for this stage of an operation. She’d wanted there to be something straight away for
the sake of the team. ‘Reasons why someone might have done all that at the Holmes crime scene,’ she began.

‘As ritual,’ said Sefton, ‘necessary for the sacrifice, if that’s what this was.’

‘As a message,’ said Costain, ‘a taunting puzzle hidden in all that detail, like Jimmy said.’

‘We still don’t know exactly how the process of London remembering stuff works. According to what Jimmy saw’ – she didn’t want to say ‘in Hell’ –
‘the memories of the dead seem to matter as much as the living. If Sherlock Holmes, the remembered fictional character, is now somehow dead, then how are they still filming movies about
him?’ She held up her phone showing news footage of the three Holmes productions carrying on today despite the media screaming about the new murder. ‘Shouldn’t they have forgotten
who their central character is, or lost enthusiasm for him or something? What exactly does it mean to have “murdered Sherlock Holmes”? If we can find out what’s changed because of
the murder, then we might get some idea of motive, because at the moment that’s completely lacking.’

‘Maybe,’ said Costain, once again back to being Mr Funny with that fake-jaunty sound in his voice, ‘there’s a serial killer going after fictional Londoners. We stake out
Mary Poppins and bring Paddington in for protective custody.’

Ross thankfully realized she’d just got an email alert and looked at her phone. ‘They’ve got a DNA match from the blood on the wall in the first murder,’ she said.
‘It’s someone who was in custody at the time. Which these guys are referring to as obviously a mistake, impossible, but—’

‘Yeah,’ said Sefton, ‘but the “I” word is where we come in.’

Quill’s phone rang, a call from DI Clarke. After a moment, Quill put her on speaker. ‘We’ve now got someone we’d normally fancy for this, big time, but as you’ve
heard, he’s got the perfect alibi. That CCTV footage from outside the second murder scene shows a black male, early twenties, around six foot, about a hundred and forty pounds, scaling a
wooden ladder. We’ve got a clear shot of his face, which we’ve put through facial recognition, and he resembles to a degree that would satisfy any jury the suspect already in custody
whose DNA matches that of the blood from the first scene. I’ve just sent Lisa the files.’ Ross clicked on her phone and found the image of a young man. ‘Suspect’s name is
Albert Bates, known as Albie.’

After Quill finished the call, Ross played the video. The figure climbing the ladder, with a calm, professional look on his face, was clearly the same man. ‘We need to talk to him,’
she said. ‘If he’s guilty of one or both murders, we have to find out how, and if he’s got anything to do with the Holmes murder.’

Sefton pointed to the photo of the murder weapon on the ops board. ‘We can also make use of an asset we have in our pocket. An occult London expert like Ballard might be willing and able
to tell us something about the blade and about that chalk, if he’s looking to make a deal.’

Ross automatically looked to Quill, seeking for him to split their forces. He stared back at her for a moment, then clicked again into the role he was meant to be playing. ‘Right,’
he said. ‘We’ve had a long day, so let’s get back to this tomorrow. If Clarke lets us play through, Costain interviews the suspect in jail, Sefton will talk to Ballard, and Ross
will interview the Holmes Museum curator.’

‘What about you?’ said Ross.

‘I’ll be . . . here,’ he said, once again lost.

Costain felt HM Prison Wandsworth before he saw it. Driving his car along Trinity Road, he felt that old grumbling sensation in his gut again, like when he’d first got
the Sight and attempted to leave London. Up ahead on the right, a big beast was coming, full of shit and history. He turned off and drove slowly towards the low, square fortress that actually had a
portcullis visible over its doors. There were leafy little houses all around, pensioners out in their gardens. This monstrosity loomed over them.

He’d been inside ‘Wanno’ once before, as an undercover placed to obtain information on drugs getting into the prison. He hadn’t found out very much, hadn’t had a
chance to. There’d been a whisper that he’d been compromised and they’d got him out of there. Given the sentences of the offenders he’d mixed with, and the brevity of his
stay, he doubted anyone would recognize him. Still, it gave him pause. This place had given him nightmares way before the Sight.

He went to the staff entrance and found an office with thick glass and an intercom that was always on, no button to push. He slipped his warrant card through the slit and waited in this space
that made him itch, made him feel like an animal in a net, just the bleached smell of it, the same smell you got in sandwich shops after some homeless person had wandered in and they’d
cleaned up. It seemed like it took an age while they checked his appointment and identity against their lists.

They finally found his data, and asked for his phone, which he handed over, annoyed despite knowing about this stage in advance, looking into the face of the office worker who was regarding him
with a horrifying blandness that could mask . . . anything. Who knew what the people in a bureaucracy like this thought about him? He was sent to the social visits side of the entranceway, had to
actually go out and come in again, and there he was asked, again with that blank look, to allow himself to be patted down, to see if he was carrying contraband, and scanned for explosives and
drugs. He found he was breathing hard as it was done, wanted to say he was a fucking police officer, but that’s you protesting too much, eh, mate? All by the book, sir. He hoped the man would
say that, but he didn’t. Costain took small pleasure in indicating the officer should stop. ‘Wait a sec.’ He took from his pocket an evidence bag, in which was a most unusual
item. ‘Evidence to show the prisoner.’ The man took it, looked inside it without opening the bag, finally gave it back to him and nodded.

He was sent back out again and into the staff side once more to await his escort. The middle-aged man in prison officer uniform arrived ten minutes later, but, walking swiftly through the
bleached corridors, making the man keep up, Costain managed to arrive on time for his appointment with the officer in charge. He asked to see what had been in the suspect’s pockets when
they’d brought him in, and quickly sifted through a tray containing a mobile phone, a wallet in bright purple with a tiny coke spoon attached, which was surely a statement that said the
opposite of what this kid thought it did, a little cash, crumpled, some condoms past their expiry date. Costain switched on the phone, found nothing blazing to his extra senses from the screen.
None of these items had anything of the Sight about them. ‘What’s he like?’ he asked.

The officer in charge shrugged.

Costain was led into the Heathfield Centre, as the main body of the prison was called, and then towards B Wing. He walked down corridors painted pale green and cream with a new prison officer
beside him. She made little sighing jokes, her face set into a calm lack of expression. The place smelt of guilt and denial. The feeling was ground into the walls. There were little cracks in the
edifice of hurt, flashes of light that Costain glimpsed out of the corners of his eyes as he walked, actual visible hope, which only served to make the cloak of cynicism and self-defeat more
obvious. The building felt like the waiting room for the Hell he’d himself once glimpsed.

Thinking about it suddenly made it almost too much to take. He nearly turned back. He would have done had it not been for a questioning look from the prison officer. He was the wrong person to
come here. In the past, perhaps Quill would have picked someone else. Or he’d have sent Costain deliberately to rub his nose in it. Even that would have been easier to handle. The guilt of
this place was making him think of Lisa. He associated any sort of guilt with her, because of what he’d done to her.

He thought of being inside her, of the passion on her face, and then killed that thought. That was the guiltiest thing of all, the thing she must think of all the time, that she and he had just
been about sex, when being with her had been for him the first time in his life when sex had felt like coming home. He thought about how there was such stark silence every time they had to work
together, how every time they talked it felt as though they might just suddenly start talking like they once had.

It must take such effort on her part to keep her guard up when he was around, not to let herself relax in his presence for even a second. No, who was he kidding? His crime against her had been
so big that it took her no effort at all, because she felt it again every time she saw him. He realized his thoughts had distracted him from what he was seeing. There were impossible shadows moving
on the walls. The motions were the raising and lashing of a whip. With the shadows now came sounds. Screams began echoing and re-echoing, bouncing back from the ends of every corridor in this part
of the prison.

He felt the whip on his back, damn it; he actually felt it through his jacket like the sting of a wasp and flinched.

This place had been where they’d once kept the national stock of the birch and the cat-o’-nine-tails, as though there might be a shortage. The prison officer, oblivious, led him
round a corner and Costain jumped at a new sudden noise, the release of a catch, something falling, a crack of wooden machinery. The new shadow fell down the corridor towards and over him: the
gallows.

He couldn’t remember how many it was, over a hundred people, who had been executed here, including Lord Haw-Haw and Derek Bentley. The death penalty for murder had been abolished in 1965,
but they’d kept the gallows here in good working order, it was said, until 1993. Just in case the powers that be changed their minds. He’d read about Oscar Wilde being kept in here, his
only crime being that he was gay. Costain wondered about whether there was a memory of that kept by the building, or rather by all the living and the dead who kept a memory of the building, and
then, of course, in the way of the Sight, all of a sudden Costain could see him, a hunched figure, trying only to cling on to something of himself, stumbling ahead, looking suddenly agonized
sidelong as small children were marched in a line past him. He was worried entirely for them, not at all for himself.

Costain wondered about that for a moment. Partly to get rid of an incredulous expression on the face of the prison officer, who was probably wondering what sort of a loony she was escorting,
with all his sudden twitches and winces, he asked her if children had ever been kept here.

‘Oh yes, tons of them, back in the nineteenth century. You know, sensible policies for a happier Britain.’ She led him into a corridor of interview rooms at the end of a cell block.
He was shown into one of the rooms, provided with coffee by another prison officer, and then the young man familiar from the scene-of-crime video was led in, in prison uniform. His face
didn’t wear the same purposeful expression as it had on the camera footage, just a sort of calm boredom. The escorting officer left and closed the door. They were alone. No CCTV, even.

Costain took a long breath and was immediately a professional, his game face on. ‘Are you Albie Bates?’

The kid nodded.

‘Don’t just fucking nod to me, son – you’re in shit here.’

The basic intimidation didn’t get to the kid. He’d been interviewed by the main investigation earlier this morning. He’d claimed ignorance throughout. Easy to do when you had
the perfect alibi. He’d never read any Sherlock Holmes stories because he’d never read anything, and didn’t remember seeing anything with the word ‘Rache’ in it on
telly. Now he leaned back in his chair, opened his legs, folded his arms, resigned to this latest waste of his valuable time.

‘Yeah.’

From what Costain had read, the kid was like most repeat offenders, adapted to life inside. He kept himself fit enough to avoid trouble, made small sums of money off jail work to pay for his
cigarettes, relied on the regularity and stability in here. As soon as he’d been released, on three previous occasions, he’d gone straight back into pissed-up violence and theft. He was
in this time for GBH, having delivered a serious kicking to an old lady while still failing to get her purse off her. This was the sort of boy the gangsters only signed up once, the sort of boy who
found life out there to be just too fucking complicated. The good news about that was he was no criminal mastermind. The bad news was he looked a very bad fit for a masterplan to assassinate
Sherlock Holmes.

Costain took the item from his pocket that Sefton had chosen and put it on the table between them. It was something the DC had found in a second-hand shop, a tiny bell, with a London
manufacturer’s mark on its handle. He hadn’t managed to discover anything about it, which was a little worrying, because, to those with the Sight, it screamed its existence; it
bellowed. It had taken weeks for Sefton to conclude that it didn’t seem able to do anything else, at least not without precise instructions he couldn’t even guess at. Costain had
carried it in his pocket this morning feeling like he was hauling a bowling ball, until the bell’s feeling of significance had become eclipsed by that of the prison itself. You put this thing
down in front of someone with the Sight, they were going to react.