Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (43 page)

‘Until we touched Losley’s soil,’ said Quill. They all remembered that moment when they had gained the Sight, by touching a pile of earth in the home of that terrifying
witch.

‘I bet we’d have seen the protocol as tiny golden strings of information,’ said Sefton, ‘and what was in Losley’s soil as the silver fluid, if we could have seen it
with the Sight before we, you know, we actually
had
the Sight.’

‘And I must have had that protocol on me too,’ said Lofthouse, ‘also given to me by the key. Because I got the Sight when I went into the lake. God, we have to go back there.
We have to see what that poison did.’

‘Later for that, ma’am?’ said Ross. Lofthouse calmed herself and nodded.

‘I think, ma’am,’ said Sefton, ‘that you didn’t get the Sight when we did because you were out of range.’

‘I was in Birmingham for most of that day.’ She sat back in her chair, astonished all over again. ‘I don’t know whether to be grateful or angry. The things I saw on the
way here . . . how do you live with this?’

‘It gets easier,’ said Quill. ‘Mostly.’

‘I hope—’ Lofthouse suddenly yelled.

They all spun, to find that Moriarty had appeared, reacted to that reaction and scampered into a corner. They explained. Lofthouse tried to stand, winced, thought better of it. ‘You know,
when I first got you together, we had a round table. I must have had a feeling in my head for where the Continuing Projects Team had sat at theirs, because I even got you to sit at particular
places. Well, now I hope I qualify for a seat at that table. If I’m meant to be one of you, at least now I can help directly, share what you experience and try to find some way for you all to
get the bloody Police Medal.’

‘I would not turn that down,’ said Costain.

‘The next thing I should do is try to use my authority to shut down the Sherlock Holmes filming.’

Ross was pleased at the speed of Lofthouse’s deductions. That was actually top of their list of actions to be taken immediately. Lofthouse made the calls as they sat there, Sefton being
kept supplied by her secretary with cups of strong, sweet tea. ‘Damn,’ she said finally, ‘none of them are willing to stop production when they’re nearly at the end of their
schedule, not without solid evidence of some sort of practical connection between what they’re doing and the murders, which we can’t provide.’

‘I’m sure your Gilbert would be up for staging a walkout,’ said Costain to Ross. She searched his expression for any sign of bitterness, but found none.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but that’s just one of three. I doubt he could convince the others, and anyway, it’s not like Holmesmania would stop overnight. If anything, the
news of a walkout would make it increase. As things stand, Holmes has at least a week or two to complete his mission.’

Lofthouse answered her phone. She listened for a moment, looking grim, then put it down. ‘One Ben Gildas has been found hanged in an upstairs meeting room at a property off Brook
Street.’

‘Fuck it,’ whispered Costain.

‘If I go along with you,’ said Lofthouse, ‘I’m going to see all sorts of horrors, aren’t I?’

‘It sounds like you already have,’ said Ross.

‘I’m not complaining. I just want to be ready.’

Quill looked like he couldn’t keep it from her any longer. ‘You’re one of us now. As we drive over to Brook Street . . . there’s something we should share with
you.’

The crime scene yielded only the sickening things that Quill expected it to. A startled-looking young man in a business suit, struck down.

He saw that Lofthouse felt it so much more than they did. The distance she had had as a police officer had been taken from her by the Sight. Plus, she now had the burden of the knowledge of
Hell. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself and nodded along, staying in command, as the main investigation, led by DI Clarke, came through, with their crime scene examiners.

They found nothing of note over the course of the night, and Quill sent his people home, himself included.

He found Sarah asleep, which was probably just as well, given the long conversations that remained to be had between them. He still wasn’t right in the head, despite Sefton’s mantra.
All it was doing was dealing with the symptoms, holding things off. His thoughts still kept wandering to terrible places, and that made it hard to express himself. The anger was still there. With
it would come the crushing anxiety. At least now he was home, and back at work. He got out of his clothes, slipped in beside Sarah and repeated to himself that he was Jimmy Quill, that London
should know that, that here was a whole list of what he was. He tried hard to believe it. Thank God, Moriarty stayed downstairs. Finally, Quill slept.

He got in bright and early the next morning to find Lofthouse had joined them once more. Sefton was there, looking pale, but keeping himself fortified with biscuits. Ross was already at the ops
board, Costain working beside her. ‘Given that we know how specific his targets have to be,’ said Ross, ‘if Holmes didn’t have such an incredible intellect and resources,
we’d have had him by now. Ben Gildas was on work placement with a medical insurance company, which only touches on the subject matter of “The Resident Patient”. Still, we’re
now sure about our limiting factors. So for the next story, “The Greek Interpreter”, Holmes will be looking for a location in Beckenham that he can seal up to burn charcoal to kill his
victim, who should at the very least be Greek and/or an interpreter with a dodgy background. If he’s going for authenticity, he’ll be capturing him or her ahead of time and starving
them first.’

‘Sealing a room isn’t that hard,’ said Costain, ‘not these days. You could do it with any modern building, though I’d pick a small room.’

‘All I’ve got about Greeks in Beckenham,’ said Sefton, looking up from his phone, ‘is that there’s a restaurant called the Taste of Cyprus that has a really good
rating on Trip Advisor, so a vague estimate of number of possible targets is “some”. Wait a sec . . . finding a census page. OK, more sensibly, it’s less than a
thousand.’

‘But there are going to be a ton of interpreters,’ said Lofthouse. She looked like she hadn’t slept. ‘You get language schools all over London.’

Moriarty flashed into the room and swept darkly into a chair. Quill suddenly realized that his presence had given him a very troubling idea. ‘What if we could find him before all
that?’

‘How?’ Ross sounded wary.

‘When I was . . . very ill, I saw some stuff. I think it was real stuff. I was letting it in, attracting it, being made to see it, whatever. Listen . . .’ Haltingly, he outlined what
he was thinking.

He watched as their expressions got very worried. Then he looked to Lofthouse.

She considered for a moment. ‘I’m new at this,’ she said. ‘James, are you sure?’

Quill nodded.

Lofthouse looked up as the team approached the Heron Building in Moorgate on foot, startled all over again by the extra detail and meaning the Sight gave her. The way the
architecture toyed with the history of this place seemed . . . insulting, askew. That meant bad things could happen here. Given that, and the ongoing situation with Peter, who had insisted on going
to work as always, but was going at some point to start asking some really awkward questions, and what James had told her about where they were all going when they died . . .

She felt like she had given her all in pursuit of saving something and lost everything as a result. Was it sheer duty keeping her going? No, it was that here were four people who were in the
same boat.

They negotiated their way to the twenty-eighth floor, the building’s management thankfully deciding they didn’t need a warrant for a ‘routine follow-up’ about a deceased
resident, and probably wondering just how many more police officers were going to come barging through here. Ballard’s apartment was how Sefton had described it. Ballard’s will was
still being worked out.

Lofthouse watched as Quill went to sit down in one of the enormous armchairs, looking uncomfortable as he sank into it. Moriarty appeared in front of him, looking around as if trapped. Here, she
thought, was an example of what they called the Uncanny Valley. He had all the soul of a cartoon, creepily trying to be a person, but clearly not alive. ‘OK,’ said Quill,
‘I’ve been doing what Sefton here told me to, reinforcing the idea of who I am, letting London do some of the heavy lifting by remembering me. Doing that has let me hold on. Just about.
It’s allowed me to stop seeing Hell all around me. Now, I don’t think that was a hallucination. I think I was being allowed to see something underlying everything, a real connection
between this world and the other. So what if I stopped trying to hold that back? Don’t try to talk me out of it. I’m ordering you not to. I’m going to try it now.’

He closed his eyes.

Lofthouse saw the others all wanting not to allow him to do this, but at the same time wanting him to keep his dignity, to let him have this moment of leadership. She could have stopped it, but
hadn’t Quill said it was only just about working? Could whatever Quill was planning be anything that might truly harm him?

Then the walls of the apartment began to change.

Quill knew he’d been fighting off this illness that was also part of him by repeating comforting lies. He’d been bigging himself up. He’d been OK with that,
because surely it was what just about everyone did. Most people in London thought death was the end, and yet they still found reasons to do things while they waited for the inevitable. Others
expected pleasant afterlifes of their own. These were the colours they added to the black and white of life and death.

But come on. He knew better.

He made himself consider the futility of everything. He would die and go to Hell. Sarah would die and go to Hell. Little Jessica would die and go to Hell.

He imagined what would become of her there. He remembered what he had seen being done to children.

That made him angry, made him want to fight, but there was no fighting something as big as this; he let himself realize that. It was like fighting the weather.

The anger got inside him, into all the places it had been getting into lately. He hated having senses. He hated having a real body in the real world. He hated being conscious. He hated that
useless cunt at home with her meaningless gestures of support. He hated his child, the burden always round his neck. When they went to Hell, it would be even more painful than when he did. He hated
everything and everyone and himself in the face of that. He hated the fear that was everything he was. The fear and the hate were the same thing.

He let all these bad thoughts flood back into him and have their way. Because it was all still there. He’d just been holding it back.

He wasn’t in control of any of it. Objects were just objects. People were just objects that
knew
. There was no extra meaning colouring any of it. There was no hope.

He was aware that he was sobbing, bawling like a baby, for the same reason a baby bawls when it enters the world.

He opened his eyes and there was Hell.

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Lofthouse, ‘I can see it too.’

‘We all can,’ said Ross. She, Costain and Sefton were staring in horror at what James was doing to himself. They were experiencing once again, Lofthouse realized, what she was
understanding for the first time. She could
feel
the ghostly tensions wracking Jimmy. She could also
see
. . . what?

The ultra-modern interior of the apartment had become something like a Victorian gentleman’s club, all statues and brown surfaces and plants and trophies. Quill sat in one of its decadent
armchairs, his face contorted, his mouth working soundlessly. Moriarty had become a vague ghost, Quill’s paranoia, Lofthouse realized, having returned to its owner. The surroundings,
relatively normal as they were, shook Lofthouse to the core. They came with a smell that was like something on the edge of childhood memory, of the moment when the idea of fear had first come to
her, in a nightmare. The smell said that under everything real was horror. It was the decay at the bottom of the world. She could see the others reacting to it also, Costain especially. He was
looking around, waiting for some threat to leap out.

Into the room staggered Mark Ballard.

He was dressed in Victorian finery, almost too much of it: a coat so heavy it seemed to be weighing him down, a collar so big his neck was lost in it. Attached to him, leading out of the door
behind him from under his clothes, ran many tiny chains. He was staring in shock at Lofthouse and the others. ‘Don’t trust him!’ he suddenly yelled, pointing at Costain. ‘He
. . . he killed me!’

‘We know,’ said Sefton, quickly.

It took a few moments of persuasion for Ballard to calm down, but his anger was swiftly replaced by a desperate hope. ‘So . . . have you come to rescue me?’ He ran up to them,
wincing as the chains held him back. ‘Please, do it now. I have my examination soon. There’s some sort of lease system. I haven’t enough money. It’s not about justice
here.’ His voice was suddenly that of a child. ‘I want to see my mum and dad. My proper ones. Not the ones who are in here.’

‘We don’t know how to free anyone yet,’ said Sefton. ‘Tell us how to find Holmes and we’ll keep working on it.’

Ballard looked horrified that he wasn’t going to get immediate help. ‘No, no, please, you don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s
like
here. Are you real?
Listen, I can’t get up the inverted tower; I can’t see the world; they won’t let us see London. I don’t know how . . .’

‘The person you thought was this guy here.’ Sefton pointed to Costain. ‘Tell us what the deal you made with him was, give us some reason to help you. What about that knife we
showed you, for a start?’

Ballard looked confused for a moment, like he was wondering if this was some new trick of Hell. ‘It was a fetch kettle, like I told you. I was holding back on what spiel it held, hoping
for a deal, but Tony there . . . I thought it was Tony . . . when he was alone with me, he told me what to say, offered me cash . . .’