Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (25 page)

‘Is your detective inspector all right?’ he asked. ‘He seemed entirely sane.’ She told him about Quill’s leave of absence, but didn’t feel loyalty allowed her
to describe his erratic behaviour. ‘So you’re left with this man Costain in charge? It’s not like you talk about him at all. Sherlock would say—’

‘Sherlock’s not here.’

‘Sherlock would say you’re not at all sensitive about this.’

‘Sherlock wouldn’t, because all of his supposed deduction was about physical clues, not about how
random
most people are, and besides, Sherlock can fuck right off.’

He laughed, took the bill from the hand of the waiter that proffered it, dropped a card into it without looking, handed it back. Ross had decided before she got here that, much as she’d
like to go Dutch, she’d let him pay for food she wasn’t capable of enjoying. ‘Would you like to go on somewhere? Dancing? I think I’d like to distract you from your current
investigation.’

Somewhere loud, where she couldn’t ask questions? No. She felt emotionally like she was anticipating a swim or a run. Her physical arousal was moving her away from her baseline of comfort,
though. She wondered if they could find a way to talk that was about ease rather than excitement. ‘How about we go back to mine?’ she asked.

Once again, he just smiled.

Joe had been incredulous about Sefton getting back to work so quickly. ‘So they can just snap their fingers and do that, then? Get poison out of your system,
miraculously, like proper gods?’

Sefton had said they obviously could. Joe had replied that it’d be a good thing to get one of these gods on Kev’s side permanently. Then his expression had gone all trying not to
cry, and Sefton had held him. They ended up laughing in relief at him having come out the other side OK. Sefton, as always, did his best to reassure him.

The next morning, before getting into his car, he tried to call Ross, half interested in the answers to their work questions, half in a ‘so, girlfriend’ kind of way, but he only got
her voicemail. Immediately he clicked off, his phone rang again. It was Sarah Quill. Sefton was the only one of his team she had managed to get hold of. She hadn’t left messages for the
others; she didn’t want to say what was going on. She asked him to come over as soon as he could.

So here he was, at Quill’s house, which he’d last seen with the shadows of an urgent investigation hanging over it. Now it felt bad in an entirely different way. Sefton could feel
the wrongness as he walked to the door, feel that now this place was . . . haunted. Sarah answered; she had that trying-not-to-cry expression, but with it was a great determination and anger.
‘He’s in the kitchen,’ she said.

Sefton felt Quill’s presence before he saw him. He’d never experienced this sensation of the Sight before, to feel a place haunted by a living person. Quill was squatting by the
fridge as he entered, drawing slowly and carefully on a piece of paper. He looked up and nodded. ‘Yeah, good, now’s the right time for you to be here.’

Sarah looked anguished at Sefton. ‘I called him, Quill.’

‘Well, good for you. What do you want, a medal? Just because for once you haven’t put something in my way, just because you accidentally got something right. Kev, never mind her,
look at this.’ He was drawing, Sefton saw, what seemed to be a star map. ‘She says the asteroid couldn’t be in that part of the sky. I say it could, millions of years ago. We may
be dealing with a crime that old. Logic, you see?’

So Sefton asked, and heard the whole theory, which jumped over many lapses of logic with phrases like ‘That must mean . . .’ Sefton called him on this the first couple of times, only
for Quill to become suddenly furious, to say he was getting in the way like Sarah was.

Oh God. Sefton looked back to Sarah. She must have been putting up with this for the last few days. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got all that on board now. I’ll just go
and get my notebook and write it down.’ Quill nodded, pleased, and went back to his drawing.

Sefton led Sarah into the spare bedroom upstairs, where he was sure Quill couldn’t hear them. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You should have called us
earlier.’

Sarah was trying desperately to keep it together, a hardness about her eyes and mouth, not giving in to collapse just because help was at hand. ‘I kept waiting for it all to make sense. I
mean, what he’s saying isn’t
so
mad, is it? At least, not all of it. Not with what you lot have been through. It’s the anger I can’t deal with. He doesn’t show
that to Jessica – he doesn’t let himself do that – he just . . . keeps it for me. She’s in nursery now. He’s got so much worse today. I don’t want her seeing him
like this. If you could just take him back to the nick and all talk to him, maybe you could . . . persuade him that’s not true?’

He was sure she knew that was hopeless. She just didn’t want to think about what the next stage would be. ‘I think . . . we need to get some qualified medical people
involved.’

‘I don’t want him dragged off and locked up in some . . .’ She was crying now, keeping going through it, so determined. Sefton put a hand on her shoulder, amazed at her. Sarah
had gone through the trauma of having Quill die and come back, and now this, and was somehow still on her feet.

‘It won’t be like that. We’ll make sure it isn’t.’

‘I don’t want him on drugs either. I want him able to find his way back to that mind of his. This is all because of what he saw in Hell. He never told me everything. It’s still
in him; he’s never going to get away from it.’

Sefton was sure that was the case, especially the bit about Quill not telling her something. ‘They’ll start by talking to him. Maybe that’s all it’ll take. Do you want me
to make the call? I mean, to Lofthouse, because I have no idea who else to contact, but she will.’

Sarah visibly forced herself to nod. ‘Please.’

Sefton started hitting buttons on his phone. ‘And then I’m going to stay put, OK? You can go for a walk, get a coffee or something. I’ll look after—’ There was a
sudden noise from down the hallway, a door slamming, then fast footsteps down the stairs. Sefton ran out, saw Quill wasn’t there. He ran downstairs, out through the front door . . . just in
time to see Quill’s car speeding off into the distance. He stood there for a moment, desperate, wanting to yell after him.

Ross lay in the curve of the arm of the sleeping actor. What a strange thing to wake up and see a famous person on your pillow. She was steady, calm, set for now at an absence
of all pain and stress, the best she could feel. He had been objectively lovely last night, very interested in satisfying her, but urgent about his own needs too. She had been trying, as they
undressed each other, to ask him some of the questions her team had prepared, hoping his human body’s needs would overrule his desire to be careful.

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.