Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (34 page)

Costain entered again as they did so, stepping carefully away from the men storming out. He looked contrite, in control again. He raised his hands. ‘What I said before—’ he
began. Then, at a wry glance from Flamstead, he stopped, decided instead to remain stoic. ‘I heard what was happening. I went round the corner to the hotel front desk and showed my warrant
card. I said you’re with us.’ Then he went to the bar and started apologizing.

‘He’s really keeping it together,’ whispered Flamstead, his tongue in Ross’s ear, ‘a straightforward character with no contradictions.’

Quill had found an empty space in one of the houses that seemed to be intended as a bedroom. It was freezing. The heating didn’t work. Of course, these weren’t real
homes, but at least he was out of the wind. The question the Smiling Man had left him with sat in his stomach like indigestion. He would need an answer by the morning.

Just accept, and then all hope is gone. Great! Done! Sorted! Ignoring the cold, he got his notes from his bag and started arranging his ops board around the room. He stopped after a while. None
of the connections seemed to connect. He looked to one of the windows, with no curtains, and saw the lurid lights of Hell outside. They could become solid, something to depend on, if he agreed.
That would just be for him. For nobody else. Not yet. Against them, on the close outside, stood the silhouette of Moriarty.

Quill realized that another figure was visible against the lights, had seen him and was now approaching. Shit! He leaped into the corner and pulled his coat over him to hide.

He heard the sound of the door opening. Someone entered the room. He couldn’t face whoever it was being a copper.

A hand pulled aside the coat. Quill scrambled away and saw who it was. It was Laura. She was looking as calm as ever.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Have you moved to London?’ Quill leaped to his feet. ‘Have you?’

‘No.’ Her voice was careful as always. She had the sort of face that clearly had once been that of a man, but somehow her transition had added something to it. Whatever it was that
had been added, some hard-won sort of compassion, maybe just the result of all the shit people had flung at her, Quill found himself relieved to see it now. ‘Why do you ask?’

He made himself be calm, to match her. ‘How did you find me? Did one of my lot use . . . stuff you don’t know about?’

‘Nothing like that. You switched on your phone. Sarah has “Find My Phone” set up for you. She asked me to go to see you first, because . . . well, she’s afraid of you.
And she’s afraid
for
you.’ Quill was biting his lip hard. ‘I was hoping we could talk, and you could tell me what was wrong, because Sarah thinks some of it is about
me.’

Quill had to force out the words. His own voice sounded to him like that of a scared child. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Sarah also said that, within some limits which she set out for me, I should believe what you say. She told me about what happened with Jessica last year. About her being taken by Mora
Losley. About . . . what Mora Losley really was.’

‘And you believed that?’

‘Yes.’ It was the quickest, most unqualified reply he’d ever heard to that question. ‘I know Sarah. I also know the truth when I hear it.’

‘That was all she told you?’

‘Yes, and to be honest, that was enough to scare the fucking crap out of me, Jim. I can see why you don’t want me to move here. I’m having second fucking thoughts
myself.’

‘She didn’t tell you the hard bit.’

‘She said you wouldn’t tell her.’ She sat down opposite him and waited.

He paced for a while. ‘There’s stuff she doesn’t know. Big stuff. It rips up everything you rely on. It makes all this’ – he gestured around him – ‘into
a joke. I have to tell you, though, so you can save yourself. Then I’ll have saved one.’

‘By me not moving to London?’

‘Yes! That’s all you have to do. I can’t tell you why. It’s about a threat that’s been made. More than a threat, a certainty. It’s someone Sarah’s
probably told you about. We call him the Smiling Man. It’s too late for the rest of us. We’re doomed. Sarah and Jessica. They don’t know. That’s why I’m . . . Because
they don’t know and I can’t tell them! You can save yourself by not moving here.’

Laura nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

‘So you won’t live in London?’

‘I’ll live where I want to. This Smiling Man of yours doesn’t get to tell me what to do.’

‘But I’ve told you! You don’t know—’

‘This is harassment. You give in to that, that way lies madness.’ She went to him and put a hand on his arm. ‘You’ve done your best to save me. Now it’s up to
me.’

Quill could only look at her. ‘I’m sorry—!’

‘Listen. What do you most want to do?’

As they walked out into the cold night air, Quill stopped. He could still see, he realized, Moriarty, standing next to what must be Laura’s rented car in the empty close
of houses.

Him being there felt different now. Not a threat. Quill felt that Moriarty was something to do with him, that he almost had a responsibility towards him. There was something about him that made
Quill think . . . perhaps here there was even something that might help him, though help still felt a long way away.

He didn’t know what he was doing. Acting on instinct. Still ill. ‘Can you see someone over there?’ he asked Laura.

Laura remained deliberately calm. ‘No.’

‘Great,’ said Quill. ‘Here, you!’ He marched towards Moriarty, who reacted like a scared cat, but Quill made calming gestures. ‘I’m going home. Do you want to
come too?’

Lofthouse lay on the ground, panting. She was in absolute darkness. She’d bloody well left her pack on the other side of the chamber when she’d run at those things.
She had her torch, and what was in her shoulder bag . . . Yes, it was still here . . . and she’d kept hold of the gun, thank Christ. She felt like her ribs were bruised down her right-hand
side, where she’d landed. She’d taken some of the impact on her knees, which also felt fucked. She’d hit a few lumps of rock on the way down too. Her fingers and palms were ripped
from trying to grab for dear life. She put out a hand and found a rock wall, the cool of the wet rock against the heat of her skin. She found purchase and used her better leg to push herself
upright. She experimentally put some of her weight on her other leg, and just managed to stifle a cry of pain.

She lay against the wall, breathing deeply. She was going to die here. She was going to die far beneath the earth. She would just vanish. They’d say she was having an affair. The thing
inside Peter might think she’d taken action against it and Peter might be tortured, might be killed. She let the panic take her for a while, her breathing turning into gasping, but then that
turned into coughing, and she slowly calmed. The fear had nowhere to go. She felt a familiar sensation and searched for her charm bracelet. The key was indeed still pulling steadily in one
particular direction. She found the torch and switched it on. There was a narrow path ahead of her, another sheer drop to her right. She’d hit without rolling, thank God, or that might have
been the end of her.

Was she making herself believe it, or was the pressure of the key slightly more insistent, as if she was closer to her target? No graffiti here, but feet had clearly worn down the way. Too
scared to test her weight on her damaged leg, she started to edge along the wall. She was blazingly thirsty, but she had no water now. She tried licking the stone, and after a while, that helped a
little. She had no option. She would keep calm and carry on.

Quill entered his own house again slowly, carefully. He looked at Sarah, who was standing in the hallway, her own expression careful, non-committal. The weight of just seeing
her again. If he started to apologize, a crack would burst wide open. He was going to do more than that, though, wasn’t he? He walked into the lounge and saw all the familiar furniture,
another room with lots of things in it. What he had to work his way back towards was meaning, for himself and between him and Sarah. He went and deliberately sat down in what he distantly knew was
‘his favourite chair’.

Sarah entered with half a smile on her face, probably at how serious he was looking, but that look faded. Laura said she’d go to make some tea, but Quill called her back. He was going to
go for this straight away.

Moriarty looked around the lounge door and, unseen by the other two, swept in, with a little snarl of contempt at the accommodation. He had suddenly become a bit of a pantomime villain, Quill
realized. Maybe he could only be a monster when he was hidden. Now he was in plain sight, the clichéd details of him felt harmless, even homely. Quill had felt such an urge to gather him up,
to bring him in from the cold. This connection he felt to Moriarty, it was as if he himself had . . . created him.

That was an interesting thought. A weirdly clear thought. It felt like the first inkling of something better. But never mind that now. There was something urgent he had to do.

‘There’s a sign,’ he said to Sarah and Laura, ‘over the gates of Hell.’

He said the next sentence. He told them what the sign said. He wondered if he was fantasizing about doing this. No, here he was. Here was the weight being entirely lifted from his shoulders. He
couldn’t feel it going. The look on her face wasn’t scared yet. That would take a while.

Laura looked to Sarah, interrogating her about whether this was true, or part of Quill’s delusions. She’d had some time to think about what the revelation might be. She had the
perspective to get scared. Quill was relieved, sort of, to see that Sarah believed him. She came to sit closer, opposite him, and took his hands in hers. He started to sob at the touch.
‘No,’ she said gently, ‘listen, listen. You don’t just have to tell me. You can’t. You have to tell your lot. Right now.’

Ross, Flamstead and Costain had stayed in the bar, her talking to Flamstead, Costain keeping his distance, talking to anyone and everyone else, starting up conversations with
that easy undercover charm. God, this was like being at school. If she left with Flamstead, would Costain make a fuss? Which version of him would prevail? She felt her phone vibrate, saw who the
call was from and scrambled to answer it.

That familiar voice on the other end of the line. Quill. It wasn’t quite him; he talked very weirdly, as if there were pressures on him she couldn’t understand. He asked her if she
remembered that he’d been to Hell, and she was saying, ‘Well, bloody of course . . .’ when he came out with his bombshell.

She had to sit down. He repeated it. ‘I heard,’ she said. ‘It’s everyone who ever lived in London. They’re all in Hell. We’re all going there. That’s .
. .’ She struggled to find the right words for a moment. It was too big to process. Except with a part of her mind that was always processing things. Which had suddenly realized.
‘That’s something I can
use
.’

She made sure Quill was with people who were looking after him, talked to Sarah for a moment and said she thought what he’d said was probably true, yeah. Her mind was racing. She finished
the call, then called Costain over, turned to Flamstead. ‘We’re all going to Hell. You knew, didn’t you?’

He just looked sad at her.

‘What?’ said Costain.

She repeated what Quill had said. He looked like he couldn’t process it either. ‘This is such leverage, but the three of us can’t bloody use it. This lot won’t believe
you or me. Who would they believe? Wait. I know.’ She grabbed the programme out of her pocket, found where the room was and before either of them could ask her what she was talking about, she
was on her way out of the bar.

There were five people in the panel room, kneeling in a circle under the light of a PowerPoint presentation, the single slide of which said, ‘Other (?),’ against a
bright green background, a pile of small sacrifices being burned in a brazier between them. Ross and Costain quickly joined them. Flamstead stepped into the middle of the circle, causing one of
these middle-aged ladies to scream and the others to start shouting. He threw an enormous wad of cash onto the brazier. It erupted into green flame. ‘Come on, then, you irritating
bitch,’ bellowed Flamstead. ‘This is
me
calling!’

When he spoke to others of his kind, Ross noted, he spoke the truth.

She appeared without fanfare – not there one moment, there the next. Her smell was of exotic spices . . . travel . . . dirt . . . Ross realized that the scent itself was dragging her
Sighted brain towards horrors, that she would get to thinking of something terrible in just a moment, and consciously hauled her attention away. The figure that sat where the brazier had been had a
furious scowl on her face. She was looking angrily at Flamstead. ‘They have to understand,’ she said, ‘you only ever help them for your own ends.’

‘They know that, Brent. Or should I say Mother?’

‘You just told them my
name
!’

‘I suppose I just did. They’ll find a good use for it.’

The goddess turned to the circle, looking only slightly less angry. ‘I told you before,’ she said, ‘I keep telling you, every time I’m summoned, the things you must do.
You never
do
them.’ Her voice was a mixture of Jamaican, Eastern European; it again started to lead Ross to thoughts of terrible suffering. She brought an awful awareness of that
suffering with her. It would be tough, she realized, to keep this goddess around for any length of time. She looked to Costain. He was back to his stoicism, his defence against all things.

Ross turned back to address the summoned goddess. She dared to use the name that Flamstead had just revealed. ‘Brent . . .’ She saw the others in the circle looking at her in awed
horror. ‘Tell them what’s on the sign above the gates of Hell.’

The appearance of the goddess visibly warped. She was trying, Ross realized, to get away. ‘They mustn’t know. It’ll crush them. My people most of all. They will think their
lives are for nothing.’

‘Right now they are!’ shouted Ross.