Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? (42 page)

‘A man in his mid-thirties, thinning hair, dressed in what we would regard as too shabby a style for business but which seems to be the way in this world, always with this same foolish
grin on his face. Yet I knew, in my bones, this was the evil one himself.’

‘We learned at the conference that he’s not Satan,’ said Ross. ‘He’s just a very naughty boy.’

Watson looked puzzled at her. ‘In any case, they had a conversation to which I was not privy. Upon his departure, Holmes shook the man’s hand. Which I saw with great trepidation.
After the man had gone, my friend would not talk to me, or look me in the eye. He went out and returned with a strange dagger, about which he would say nothing. He ordered a parcel to be delivered
downstairs, astronomical charts and photos, about which he consulted me, though I knew too little to advise him.’

‘Even with the Internet,’ said Costain, ‘Holmes
can’t
learn anything about astronomy.’

‘Once it had arrived, he began, in the space of one night, a weird campaign against the fittings of his study, changing many things in odd and startling ways. He asked me to trust him,
said all would be well when he had completed his bargain, that no innocents would be harmed, and many more saved with . . . what would come to pass.’ Watson visibly hesitated.

‘
What
would come to pass?’ asked Quill.

‘When we would both find ourselves “whole and real forever”. Those were his very words. When we would be no longer subject to the whims of the public imagination and could save
this rotten new London from the crime and disorder it seemed to revel in. I told him none of this meant anything to me, that I did not believe his caveats. He told me he would see me as flesh and
blood in the empty house. Whatever that means.’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Ross, ‘that’s what he’s doing. That’s the motive. He wants to become a real boy.’

‘Holmes and Watson were made solid, made real, by “Holmesmania”,’ whispered Sefton. ‘By those three productions all happening at once, by so many people being
interested. London’s got to a point where its memory can do that.’

‘But Holmes wants to go further,’ said Costain. ‘He’s deduced that when the furore dies down, he’ll go back to being a ghost, and he can’t have
that.’

‘So he’s made a deal with the Smiling Man,’ said Quill. ‘This series of ritual murders, a media sensation to keep London scared, to keep it moving in the direction he
wants, like with Losley and the Ripper. In return Holmes gets continuing real life.’

‘And he’s trying to source it ethically,’ finished Ross.

‘He told me,’ continued Watson, ‘he would summon me again when he had “done what he had to do”. He produced an object that he had on his person. I didn’t see
much of it in that moment. He flung me, with all the skill of a master of bartitsu, and the great strength he sometimes displays, backwards. I had a moment to glimpse that I was being flung not to
the floor but through some sort of hole. A hole in mid-air. I landed in an empty version of our rooms, with a view outside of a London that, as I discovered in the next few days, was empty of all
my fellow beings. I felt the pull, on one occasion, of something in the air, and assumed it was him summoning me home, but that sensation ceased.’

‘That was me,’ said Sefton. ‘Best not get into the details.’

‘The next thing I have to report is you bringing me here now. I thank my saviour that you are the police, and that you know enough that you may prevent my friend from undertaking whatever
terrible course of action he has planned.’

‘It sounds like he put you in a tiny “outer borough” of his own making,’ said Sefton.

‘Could you . . . tell me what he has done?’ asked Watson.

They were all silent for a moment. Then Ross began to tell him. Watson closed his eyes, his face a picture of horror. ‘This is . . . not my old friend,’ he said, when he’d
heard it all. ‘He always thought he was above the law, yes. But he is a good man. I have seen him, in the last few weeks, become so . . . changed. As if he was dragged this way and that, and,
caring little for himself, did not see it, and could not cope.’

‘I got that bit right while I was doolally,’ said Quill. ‘What Londoners believe
can
change the nature of a ghost.’

‘Yeah,’ said Costain. ‘With those three very different Sherlocks in the public imagination, with
all
of them over the years . . . our boy is definitely a little
confused.’

‘He was always one to understand how circumstance could make a man a criminal. Please, if you care about my wishes, I implore you, offer him the same courtesy.’ Watson looked
suddenly around, as if aware of some change in his situation. ‘I feel the pull failing. Can you not free me?’

‘Sorry . . .’ Sefton was leaning against a table, on the verge of collapse. ‘I’m guessing Holmes will have sorted things so you get out if his plan fails, but I
can’t . . .’

‘Then no matter. I trust it to your hands. I have told you all I know. Save Sherlock Holmes.’ With that he vanished. Sefton fell.

They all went to him. Costain made him some strong, sweet tea, and he took some iron tablets with it. He actually kept a supply in his holdall. ‘I’ll be OK in a couple of
days,’ he said, falling into a chair, exhausted.

They all turned at the sound of the door opening. There stood Lofthouse, on crutches, bruised and battered. ‘Would one of you,’ she said, ‘please answer your bloody
phone?’

Sherlock Holmes sat in an upstairs meeting room of a property just off Brook Street. He was in disguise as an eighteen-year-old woman, a temporary secretary. The fact he now
had to exercise no skill at all to make such transformations still disturbed him.

Those chasing him would almost certainly have been able by now to contact dear Watson. What would he tell them, that his friend had gone mad? Well, yes, he had. His thought processes, every time
he tried to examine them, were a cacophony of voices that came from the wild variety of impulses inside him. In his past, dreamlike existence, when he had been merely a literary character, he had
enjoyed utter clarity.

Now he was so many different people, all at once. As Watson would no doubt by now have told Inspector Quill, Holmes wanted himself and his friend to be entirely real and whole. He wanted this in
order to bring order to this chaotic world, the outward appearance of which matched his inner turmoil. He also wanted to see if being a true, living native of this world would bring an end to the
inner voices, an end to the many different selves who fought to be in charge of him. He hoped that to be real here allowed one to attempt to be in charge of one’s own character.

Here he was, committing murders, being the opposite of himself, in order to be more fully himself. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Why did these new fictions about him have to be so dark, so
extreme? They, especially, had pulled him in all directions. When he had been created, interpretations of a part were just that. Now there seemed to be multiple worlds, the possibility of an
individual being so many different things, each version too soon after the last, and sometimes all at once. How could the public believe in them all, and with such passion?

He was now aware, of course, that the victims of murderers went to Hell. That weighed on him, also. Still, what he was doing would benefit more people, in the long run.

He had, as part of him, his creator. That was the worst voice of all to contain. His creator hated him. His creator wanted him dead. He contained a sudden wince at the thought, a sudden
doubling-up as if around a physical pain. His disguise aided that containment. To think such thoughts was out of character for young Alanna.

He wanted nothing more than to bring down the entity with whom he had made this bargain. That would be his first aim when he was made real. It had become obvious the Smiling Man was not, as he
had initially thought, a traditional Satan. Indeed, he was a suspect, if what he had heard at that conference could be trusted, in the murder of said Lucifer. That would be a case worthy of
Sherlock Holmes.

Worse still, however, was what that actor who had played him had turned out to be, one of the Gods of London, devoted to chaos. He stood against everything Holmes believed in. He had not quite
managed to break Holmes, and next time the boot would be on the other foot. He was fortunate indeed that an actor in this era could make little difference to the character he was playing at such
short notice, or who knew what extremities Flamstead could have added to his inner turmoil. Still, Holmes felt Flamstead’s version inside him, felt the twist of the personality of a god
inside that. He wanted, once again, to groan in pain.

Once he had finished and had Watson by his side again, once they were whole, then he would make all this right. Watson would upbraid him, would rail against him. He would welcome it.

He realized that the door was opening. Into the room, for what he thought was an assignation, suggested by Alanna by text message, stepped young Ben Gildas, a very junior employee here. Gildas
was a habitual user of narcotics. Holmes had once had the same habits, but, curiously, a great many of his inner selves thought those habits, even carefully monitored, to be a great evil. Gildas
was, by any modern measure, a criminal. Holmes reached under his chair and picked up the rope he’d adjusted to a specific length. He approached Gildas, swinging it playfully. None of the
people he was liked the thought of what he was about to do.

Quill and his team had looked to their pockets, found that all of them did indeed have messages left in the last half-hour and had made their apologies. Lofthouse, who had a
uniform with her whose job seemed to be to open doors and pick things up, ignored their questions and led them across the road, back to her office on the Hill. With painful slowness she sat down in
her chair behind her desk. ‘Look up Richard Chartres,’ she said. ‘Or any of the Continuing Projects Team.’

Ross did. She was amazed to see public records appear on her phone. ‘We wouldn’t have known,’ she said, ‘because we didn’t have any memories of them in the first
place. How did—?’

‘I went and found my memories. Brought you back some presents.’ She put onto the desk a large, ancient book, some folded papers and an ornate shotgun.

‘You’ve been busy,’ said Costain, as Sefton, who had asked for a chair himself, immediately started to leaf through the book.

Lofthouse told them her story, and they filled her in on theirs. Ross urgently wrote down all the details in her special notebook, with Sefton interjecting at points about which he wanted more
clarity. Ross noted that none of them volunteered their new knowledge about that sign over Hell.

‘Well,’ said Lofthouse finally, ‘we’ve all been in the wars. Now, though, I have the Sight. Which I suppose I was always meant to have. Richard chose me to send the key
to, a sort of supernatural USB drive, containing everything I needed to know about his team, and how to create a new one in their image. It might have worked too, apart from everyone being made to
forget that team. The key feels like it’s done its bit.’ She held it up, limp on her charm bracelet. ‘Now it’s just a key.’

‘Thank you,’ said Quill, ‘for telling us. I understand why you couldn’t. Is Peter . . . ?’

‘He’s fine. He has no memory of the times he was possessed. He seems to have done some excellent work at the office during that time. I’m telling him it’s a medical
condition. Is that wrong? No, sorry, shouldn’t have asked that. I’m in charge, and it isn’t wrong.’

‘Five is better than four,’ said Sefton, ‘like that fortune teller once said to Ross. When I was in that longbarrow I was told that five was the knot, the knot that catches
things. What you just told us about that Halloween where the CPT got erased from memory, there were so many data points . . .’ He took Ross’s notebook and flicked back through the
pages. ‘Like what Chartres called the Lud Vanes. I reckon those are what Jimmy took off that bloke who had a go at him at the New Age Fair, the same ones that led us to the Docklands ruin in
the first place.’

‘I immediately thought there must be such objects everywhere. The first thing I did was to search my house, but there’s nothing Sighted there. I suppose that’s not surprising.
I think this might be why I like to touch the buildings I’m in. I’ve hung around too much with spooky architects.’ She sighed. ‘They thought it was all about buildings, and
not at all about people. They’d lost so much good practice over so many years. I
felt
they were vulnerable, even back then. I wish I’d known enough at the time to say so.
I’ve been watching the reaction, in official circles, to the return of the memory of them as individuals. It’s muted, as you might expect. A file here and there is no longer blank.
There’ll be a whole constituency who’ll now be wondering if, a few years ago, they had a stroke. Friends and relatives will start talking. It’ll be fascinating to see that
pattern, all those impossible memories, come to the surface, whether or not anyone will realize that something extraordinary happened to anybody but themselves. What the CPT really did was a
secret, so I don’t know if the people in your world . . . I should say
our
world now—’

‘They’ll know,’ said Sefton. ‘Those who encountered the old law, or even researched them, will remember what they found out.’

‘They might see it,’ said Ross, ‘as an indication we’re getting the job done.’

‘And now the CPT are back in human memory,’ said Lofthouse, ‘we stand a chance of finding anything else they hid away, any records or objects that weren’t plundered from
the ruins in Docklands.’

Sefton seemed to have a sudden thought. ‘Did the Continuing Projects Team often use the word “protocol”?’

‘All the time. One of their euphemisms, for what anyone else would call a spell.’

‘A spiel.’ Sefton corrected her.

‘Don’t you start. Why do you ask?’

‘When we first saw her, Mora Losley told us there was a protocol “on” us. You say you had strong feelings about which of us to pick for this team. I think the key had already
picked us as its chosen successors to the CPT, placed on us something like whatever spiel was said in the ceremony for new recruits in that Docklands HQ of theirs, preparing them for immersion in
the lake. The lake was meant to be the power source, but we didn’t have one.’