Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (21 page)

‘I heard weird noises from his room next door,’ said Costain. ‘He was thrashing about; then he yelled, so I called back, got no answer, ran down and got a key off the front
desk.’ He sounded like he was making excuses, desperately trying to establish a credible cover story for this not being his fault. As if it could be. As if this was about him. ‘I found
him lying on the carpet with the snake still on him. It had its mouth clamped onto him. The skin around its mouth . . . you don’t want to see. It had been chewing. They always say with a
major injury don’t move them, so I didn’t. I wanted to kill the snake, but I thought, Shit, what if that makes it pump more venom into him? So I called 999 and they got there in less
than five minutes. They were brilliant. They’d obviously talked to someone on the way over, and they took him and the snake both. I mean, these paramedics, they actually grabbed a
snake.’

Ross had seen the snake, still alive, in an empty fish tank in the paramedics’ office. An Indian cobra, she’d found out, by comparing it to pictures online. Of course, a small
hospital like this didn’t have any antivenom. Some was being flown here from London, less than an hour, they said. ‘A neurotoxin that will often kill in a few minutes,’
she’d read online. The effect was something like a heart attack.

The snake in the story had been a ‘swamp adder’, but there was no such animal. This speckled, dangerous species, native to India, was indeed, another search confirmed, what several
people thought was the closest thing to the snake in the story.

‘Right,’ she said, determined to do something instead of just standing here. ‘We need to find that elderly woman Kev described to you. She set him up to “play the part of
Sherlock Holmes” by making the same shapes himself. She must be in on it, one of our ever-increasing gang of suspects. If there was CCTV overlooking that park, we can
confirm—’

‘There won’t be,’ said Costain. ‘This town doesn’t have much coverage.’

‘They couldn’t find a victim in this town, so they made one. Always the plan within a plan. We have a description, and indications of where this old woman could be found, assuming
she was telling the truth. Which is bloody unlikely. Let’s get it out to the local uniforms.’

They went to the hotel and found crime scene examiners working the room. There was no bell rope, of course, as there had been in the story, not that snakes could slide down
them anyway, apparently. Nor could they be controlled, as the snake in the story was, by whistling. The bed could be moved, not having been bolted to the floor. The snake, it seemed, had actually
been introduced through an air vent above the bed. The vent itself was too narrow for a person to fit into, but it led up to a between-floors space in which, crouching, someone could fit. Maybe
that had been their short killer again.

The examiners entered the gap through a floor panel that was loose under a rug on the floor above, having been already prised open, and found regular-sized shoe prints in the dust, a photo of
which they sent to Ross. Glove marks, no fingerprints. The hotel CCTV did indeed show an old lady who matched the description Sefton had given, delicate lace gloves on her hands, show a surprising
amount of sudden heft in heaving open the floor panel.

‘Who
are
these people?’ said Costain. ‘What sort of gang includes old ladies, American mercenaries, prisoners called Dean Michael and South Sea islanders of limited
stature? Talk about positive discrimination.’

‘The snake will be rare in the UK,’ said Ross, ‘not something easily kept as a pet. I’ve put the word out to the reptile-owning community. Let’s see if
anyone’s had one stolen.’

‘Can you fingerprint a snake?’ asked Costain.

‘We’ll bloody try,’ she said. She checked a message on her phone. ‘Lofthouse is coming down. They’ve stabilized Sefton, but it’s still touch and
go.’

‘Great. If there’s nothing we can do for Sefton here, I did think . . . I mean, it’d just take an hour for us to get back into London . . .’

He sounded like he thought she wouldn’t like what he was about to suggest. ‘What?’

‘Ballard’s deal hasn’t come through yet, but maybe he’d have access to something that could save Kev.’

Ross nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Wake up!’ someone was shouting in Sefton’s ear.

He suddenly realized what had happened, thought he had the snake on him, leaped up.

He was standing by a hospital bed, looking down at . . . himself.

Shit. Was he dead?

No, he could see himself breathing. He reached out a hand and it passed through his own neck, immaterial. He felt it, though. It was like a sudden cold in his throat. He moved his fingers,
experimenting, letting his curiosity help him deal with the fear. Then he remembered that someone had spoken to him, and looked around. Gilbert Flamstead was standing nearby, arms folded, a grin on
his face, watching him. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s better. Good morning.’

So was this also a dream with Holmes in it? No. Sefton knew the texture of dreams by now. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am whoever you say I am.’

‘Yeah, no, enough of that bollocks – who actually are you?’

‘I’m Gilbert Flamstead, the actor. You may have seen me in such productions as
Richard II
for the Royal Shakespeare Company, a number of blockbuster superhero movies as the
ever-so-charming British bad guy, in
Nicholas Nickleby
on Sky Arts and of course as the BBC’s current in-period but still rather funky Sherlock Holmes.’ He held up a palm before
Sefton could reply. ‘No, really, I am actually him.’

‘Sorry. Gilbert Flamstead, the actor, is aware of me standing by my own body in some sort of near-death experience? Are you . . . what, someone who knows our side of the curtain?’
Sefton took an experimental step forwards and peered at Flamstead, who seemed delighted by the attention. ‘No, you’re more than that. I’ve had a bit of experience of you lot now.
People who know this stuff are all a bit scared. You lot swan about like you own the place. You’re one of the . . . I don’t know what to call them, the great powers, like Brutus or the
Rat King.’

‘The Gods of London, you mean?’

‘I think I’d like to be the judge of that.’

Flamstead laughed. ‘In so many ways, you already are.’ He held out his hand for Sefton to shake. Sefton did so, a bit surprised there was something physical to grasp.
‘I’ve been around much longer than Gilbert Flamstead has. I’ve been called Puck, Mr Punch, Ally Sloper, the Artful Dodger. I was actually one of Lionel Bart’s drinking
companions when he was composing
Oliver!
He nearly cast me, but I thought, Bit of a giveaway.’

Sefton suddenly wondered if he should be shaking this hand. Flamstead laughed as he withdrew it. ‘Which of these gods are you, then? Are you the Trickster figure, like—?’

‘Spot on. You
are
learning. I’m the one who always finds the fun. I like pulling the carpet out from under. Everything I say is a lie. Oh, your face! Priceless! Actually, to
be honest, I’ve got a bit bored of saying that now; it just sends people round and round in that ancient loop of logic. Everything I say in the real world to real people is a lie. It has to
be. It’s just the way I’m made. So here, this not being the real world, you can genuinely trust what I’m telling you. I’ve discovered that in the real world, being British
and sarcastic, I can actually get my meaning across enough to function by just saying the opposite of what I mean. That and I’ve trained a couple of expert posh-type to media-type
translators.’

‘So when you say you
are
Gilbert Flamstead . . . ?’

‘I had myself incarnated. I decided, towards the end of what had been a terribly serious century, to see if I could have a bit more of a laugh by getting down and dirty with the flesh in
the next one. Only to find . . .’ He spread his arms in mock despair. ‘What a ridiculous bloody audience. It’s all getting more serious by the day! What fools these mortals be. I
wanted to see what it’s like from the other end. You see, when Londoners call on me, it’s because they’re fed up with how things are. They want improbable dramatic reversals. When
reality isn’t good enough, they use me to fashion great myths.’

‘So you’re sort of . . . the software that gets things and people “remembered”?’

Flamstead opened his mouth in theatrical shock. ‘I am not fucking “software”! Look at you, deciding who is and isn’t a person! Typical bloody human.’

‘OK, OK, so you’re a god who likes tricking people. Are you and the Rat King related?’ Sefton recalled that the God of London he’d met when he’d been searching for
answers in the Ripper case had also had a poor opinion of humanity.

‘What?! Him with his “bring down the government” malarkey? Honestly, politics! I’m not pro or anti anything, except when it’s the right fashion to wear for a while.
I’m just having fun. I suppose you could say he and I are all part of the same thing. You’ve probably decided he’s some sort of, I don’t know, computer virus or
something.’

Sefton looked back to his body on the bed. He felt now like he’d felt the last couple of times he’d ventured into the ‘outer boroughs’ where these ‘gods’
lived. That feeling was suppressing the panic that was threatening to well up inside him about the fact that, yeah, he’d actually been bitten by a snake, hadn’t he? Standing here right
now, he felt like he wasn’t experiencing time properly. The quality of light was a bit askew, the dust unmoving in the air. It was as if Flamstead had halted everything at a particular
moment. Which was probably a good thing, because . . .

‘You’re wondering if you’re about to die. Well, perhaps, if I don’t sort things around a bit, but me visiting you is nothing to do with that. Someone else handles
death.’

‘London is all about the letter of the law, isn’t it?’ said Sefton. ‘Like it’s enough, for whatever’s going on here, that I “act” being Sherlock
Holmes, just in terms of copying someone who was said to be him.’

‘That’s what acting is.’

‘That’s what I mean! Letter of the bloody law! Why is it like that? Go on, tell me everything that’s going on here. Just tell me who’s doing the murders. I bet you
won’t, will you? Even if I’m going to die.’

‘You’ve realized that it’s the letter of the law for those like me, and especially for
me
, to never give a straight answer. We’re not built like that.’

‘Of course you’re not. Of course. So why are you bloody here?’

Flamstead smiled, as if they were now getting to what was really important. ‘Well, you see, in my physical form, as Gilbert, I got interested in that comrade of yours Lisa when she visited
us yesterday. I felt around the shape of her in the world and found you, the only one of your lot I could have a sensible chat with. I’m not actually here in this room, a celebrity visitor.
That’d cause far too much fuss. Though I must confess, I do like the attention. No, I’ve taken advantage of your coma to get inside you, and turned this bit of human London into an
anteroom to my own borough, just so we could talk.’

‘Your own borough?’

‘Never mind that now. Let’s talk about Lisa Ross.’

Sefton wondered if he was hallucinating after all. ‘What about her?’

‘There’s something peculiar about her. What is it?’

Sefton briefly outlined the circumstances in which Ross had lost the ability to feel happiness.

‘Oh,’ said Flamstead, a finger to his lips, ‘oh, now everything makes so much sense. Just one more thing.’

‘What?’

‘Is she, you know . . . seeing anyone?’

It took some urgent communication between Ross, Lofthouse and the authorities of HM Prison Brixton to get Ross and Costain in to see Ballard at such short notice, but Ross
could hear on the other end of the phone how highly motivated Lofthouse was to get that done. She’d always got the impression Lofthouse liked Sefton. ‘Liked’ seemed too small a
word for how close Ross herself felt to him. With Quill the way he was now, Kev was what kept her hanging on in this job. She’d come with Costain because she wanted to do everything she
could, and she couldn’t do that by his bedside. ‘How do you want to do this?’ she asked as they were led through the corridors towards the interview rooms.

‘Your call. You’ve seen a lot more interviews than I have.’

Ross glanced over to the prison officer, but decided she didn’t care what they said or did. ‘We don’t have much to offer Ballard except what’s already on the way. Given
they were going to share valuable data, maybe he’d care about Kev dying.’

Costain shook his head. ‘Even if he did, he’d want to make us pay for it.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘You know, when he and I worked together, we got quite
close.’

‘You want to make it appear to him that you’re still dodgy?’

‘Yeah, how about I indicate to him that I’d be willing to play you lot for him, maybe to slip him a few items out of Sefton’s holdall, in return for anything that’d keep
Kev alive? Because I’m desperate for my mate not to die.’

‘And what do you do if he plays ball?’

‘Turns out I lied to him, but he’s not so badly off, with that lovely deal and all.’

‘Yeah, that maze of shite is one possibility. Or how about you just beat it out of him?’

He frowned at her. ‘No. Because . . . what Kev would want us to . . . Listen, we don’t just need Ballard for today, do we? We’re hoping he’ll be an ongoing source. And .
. . I’m trying to not be so . . .’ He seemed unable to find the words, threw up his hands.

‘OK. Go for your plan.’

He looked relieved, smiled that disarming smile at her. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t come on all—’

‘I’m just here for Kev, all right?’ He didn’t even look impatient. Ross considered him, as he looked away from her once more. How much of all that had been for her
benefit? The stoic, hurt man, trying to make amends, with no desire for reward. What a perfect disguise.

She let him go into the interview room alone, and once the prison officer had withdrawn, she sat outside the door, plastic cup of coffee in hand. She wondered if, after all, she would hear
sounds of violence from inside the interview room. There were none. After ten minutes, Costain opened the door and beckoned for her to come in. Ballard sat across the table, looking pleased with
himself. ‘We’ve been having a chat,’ he said.