Chapter Text
Save us both the trouble of a lengthy charade. You know where to find me.
More importantly, I always know where to find you.
The warning arrived unsigned; predictably foil-stamped and tissue-lined like all the others. A wolf's promise done up in Fraser and Parsley's bespoke clothing. Not that she'd known the first thing about posh stationery before the sporadic deliveries began. How lucky, then, to have made the random acquaintance of someone with such sinister good taste.
How naive of her, too. Even coincidental interactions bore the mark of his precise choreography.
"The universe is rarely so lazy," she whispered. And fuck all if the aphorism wasn't 100 per cent correct. He was the most oily bastard.
Still. She stared down at the card, hating herself for entertaining the small comfort elicited by his tidy threat. He remained the lone connection to her previous life. A loose thread she couldn't clip without unravelling herself completely.
A masterful stroke, that. Displaying the patience of a bystander rather than garnering the spotlight for himself. Watching as she found herself with no options but to destroy everything she held dear.
Her friends. Gone
Her family. Gone
Her job. Gone.
Only then did he pounce, offering benevolent terms for her reentry into polite society. And she'd believed him, oblivious to the truth. Every single one of his benign requests had an equal but opposite objective that metastasized over time.
The wind stirred up brittle dead things around her. Cold memories amongst the debris from an unusually dry winter this far north. She ignored the bits that clung to her hair and concentrated, instead, on the shrapnel embedded in the card's thick linen, flicking leaves away with perverse care. Because that's what one did with pretty things, wasn't it? Cherished them as though they were family heirlooms. Correspondence to be passed down to her grandchildren one day.
A keepsake book of posh omens.
Her eyes tracked the familiar swoop and swale of his penmanship. How many of these messages did he fire off in a week? A day? Some abhorrent part of her character liked to fancy herself his one and only pen friend. But Molly knew better. He'd a rather polyamorous approach to manipulation; poor souls plugged in all over the world. Not to hedge his bets—there wasn't a person on the planet he couldn't (or wouldn't) bend to his will. He collected marks to fortify his vast network, sacrificing them at will.
Today's note, number thirteen if she counted his earliest warning, scratched onto the back of a receipt from a Leicester kebab shop, reminded Molly of her place within his web despite the time she'd placed between them.
Molly grunted, her eyes welling with tears. She blinked them back, willing his cursive into something more pleasing. Like a long-awaited riposte from a beloved great aunt. Or a takeaway menu from Pizza Express.
God, what she wouldn't give for three slices of an American Hot right now (sensibly setting aside the remainder for the morning).
Her stomach grumbled in sympathy. "No good complaining about it." Her stomach disagreed. Even if she'd the option to moor somewhere remotely resembling civilization (therefore boasting a plethora of Pizza Express outlets from which to choose), her wallet would've baulked at the extravagance of a cheap meal. Countless necessities vied for the few quid she had left like loo roll and a diesel top-off. Her eyes slid to where she'd found the note, cheerily tucked into the gap between her hatch and hull as though it an invite Blu Tacked to her door at uni.
She frowned. Warped hatch and pitted hull.
More repairs on a never-ending mental list that included new weatherstripping, new bilge pump, and, as of this morning, new valves for a vintage motor whose sole purpose in life was to piss oil. Not that such improvements mattered. Repairs hinted at faith in the future, a belief that brighter days were forthcoming. And they probably were—just not for her. And certainly not for the Aisling Bailey. The narrowboat had seen its best days circa 1965. And even then...
She brushed a few errant twigs from the roof, careful as a mother smoothing her child's hair. Despite the hopelessness circling her, the Aisling Bailey reeked of optimism. Her second-hand floral curtains had a cheery sort of hope woven into their pompom fringe while the tiller’s new cobalt blue and yellow stripe cut an unrelentingly fresh figure through the otherwise inconspicuous moss green exterior.
Molly tipped her chin to the sun, trying to eke out a bit of warmth from the cataract sky. Nothing was ever enough though. Not the sun. Not her DIY motor fixes. Not a happy paint job.
Not her dubious claims of innocence.
She slipped the calling card back into its envelope. Try as she might, she couldn't help admiring the clean loops of her name written across the front by a sure hand.
Words, even dangerous ones, put to paper with a fountain pen seduced like no other.
She smudged an oil-stained fingertip over the ominous cursive, blotting out the danger.
The past.
The man who had a hand in both. After all, he'd kitted her with the skills of a criminal and set her running. No matter how far she'd gotten or how reluctantly she used her ill-gotten skills, she still found herself tethered to him.
After the disastrous Cardiff bolthole, she’d made her way to the canals. Spent months traversing these sleepy straits, fearful that his shadow lurked around every bend. Worried his informants hid behind the smiles of every passing stranger. Slowly, though, she'd grown bolder, become accustomed to fresh air and birdsong and life in daylight hours. She set cautious intentions over her morning tea. Bed down with rationed drams of cheap wine and quiet wishes for her future. Today’s suspect post ripped clean through her gossamer dreams.
She dragged a second finger—the middle one—across the expensive stationery, silently convincing herself that his spectre no longer hovered as it once had, dark as crow's wings over every aspect of her life. Small satisfaction bloomed in her chest as motor grease diluted his unmistakable penmanship.
Even so…
Gooseflesh prickled up the back of her neck.
Dread.
Her reckoning had arrived. Molly could run again, ditch the boat, burrow deeper underground. Lord knew she’d had plenty of practise.
Or...she could return to London.
The wind threw its glassine weight behind the notion, tossing the Aisling Bailey into the sodden edge of the canal. She held onto the stern railing for balance. Talbot Green stretched out beneath a charcoal grey sky, a rusted vista of bucolic obscurity no more. She’d tied up here too long, tempted by air like wet cinders and sparse, tourist-free lanes. She'd gotten drunk on the little town's stagnation. Lost her edge.
His thirteenth message served to tip her over. And, maybe, she welcomed the assist.
With a top speed of only four miles an hour, a narrowboat did seem a rather leaden choice for a fast getaway. She knew that. Of course, she did. The valves on her ancient Russell-Newbery motor had locked up again and, as she waited for the marina to secure the hard-to-locate parts, her bones quickly adapted to the rhythm of her surroundings. After so many months on the run, she told herself she'd earned the respite.
When the marina contacted her to say the parts had arrived in record time, Molly ignored the calls. "Just until summer ended," she told herself. Then autumn blew in from the North Sea, casting a cold shoulder over the canal network. When winter arrived, she'd already decided to stay on in Talbot Green. "Just until spring..."
Stupid, stupid girl.
Her stomach lurched. She'd lived an uneasy, lonely peace aboard the Aisling Bailey. Made friends with its mouldy panelling. Formed an intimate bond with its aged mechanicals. Convincing herself that the 45ft bolthole-on-water with it’s brilliant little wood stove and homely makeshift sleeping nook would keep her safe. At least the boat afforded her the luxury to make tea and bathe in separate areas! A massive improvement over her living arrangements in Birmingham.
The squinty-eyed marina broker who'd traded the narrowboat to her played up the Aisling Bailey's 'bags of potential' when Molly inquired after it. But even a sagging live-aboard in pressing need of a refit cost something. And she'd next to nothing by the time she'd made her way to the dock alongside a stand of derelict gas holders.
She could've done a lot worse than the smarmy broker's well-lubricated narrative accosting her ears. And his slimy hands fumbling under her shirt.
She could've done a lot better, too.
Molly shrugged the memory off and scanned Talbot Green's patchy fields all the way to where their rim collided with the horizon. Filthy, dangerous London lay hundreds of miles away. Yet her adopted hometown shimmered like a mirage at the edge of her peripheral vision. Close enough to breathe in.
There wasn't a thing about the city she didn't miss now that it lay beyond her reach. The hot exhaust and yeasty odours of the Bakerloo in August. Her favourite Camberwell pub at the beginning of a bank holiday weekend. The blue-grey panorama from atop Bart's old wing at lunchtime—her secret pleasure. She longed for those solitary chip breaks. And someone to share them with.
Then he was there. Silhouetted against Smithfield Market's glimmering iron and slate roof.
Careful what you wish for.
Molly missed London. Full stop. So much so she'd made a habit of calculating the canal route back to the city whenever she moored in a new spot. Marked the locks in bright blue and drew tunnels in purple on the pages of her little notebook. Just in case courage (or desperation) forced her back home.
Back to the dead.
Molly pushed a long, steady stream of air out through pursed lips. It'd been years since she'd felt the crisp, clean smoothness of an autopsy table beneath her palms. Ages since the sharp, pickle-like tang of formaldehyde permeated her hair like a favourite shampoo. Forever and a day the last time she enjoyed the pastoral quiet of the morgue before a shift start. Before the suicides began piling up. Too many for even the dreariest of city winters. No one took notice of the pattern. Not her colleges. Not the Yard.
But she had. She'd identified the markers, easy enough to do if one knew what to look for. She'd observed subtleties from the beginning, barely stopping to eat in the wake of those back-to-back-to-back autopsies, far too engrossed in what had become, embarrassingly, the most enjoyable spate of casework to which a junior pathologist without an Oxbridge pedigree could hope to be assigned.
The universe is rarely so lazy.
All the while, he’d watched her from the shadows as she dug her hole deeper and deeper. Practically handed her the shovel.
A blast of frigid, damp air tipped her sideways into the boat's tiller, nearly knocking her overboard. "Your own fault, Hooper," she hissed, tightening her grip on the bespoke envelope. Once again, he'd offer her a way out. A rope ladder familiar in every way: stationery, grammar, delivery.
She resisted the urge to peer down the path. The fleet-footed lackey, whomever he or she might be, was no doubt long gone by now. Or still close, camouflaged by a nearby copse of trees. Or holed up in the homeless encampment. The men and women who slept rough just beyond the abandoned garage never troubled her before. But now... She wouldn't put it past him to enlist someone from their ranks. Another desperate soul.
"Right," she said, squaring her shoulders and snapping a ponytail elastic from her wrist. Hand forced, decision made. She'd nothing left to loose now. Molly looped the elastic around her thick hair, exposing her neck to the elements and whatever else lay hidden in the fields around her.
The sun huddled closer to the ground. If she still wanted her breakfast, she'd have to set a quick pace against the wind. Bea's Cafe had a strict closing time of 3:45pm.
She shoved the envelope into the pocket of her mac and followed the towpath toward town.
❧
Talbot Green? Really? In any event, don't make me order you.
The note concertinaed in Sherlock's vice-like grip but not as effortlessly as he'd hoped. He'd sought to obliterate—not merely crush—the posh card and its implicit threat.
As well as the man whose bespoke treachery gilded both.
But compulsion overrode desire. It always did. Sherlock could no more destroy the note than he could its author.
At least, not yet.
He leaned against the abandoned garage, waiting for his lungs to cool and his mind to settle into the post-race gallop of a thoroughbred; grace and ease on the heels of expending so much tightly-coiled mental energy. The illuminated blur of data that had blinded him moments earlier gave way to the rote assessment of his surroundings: milky sky, dry grass, sparsely populated canal.
One by one, his fingers slackened until the crumpled note rested solely in his broad palm. A precarious position even for stock weighed down by unnecessary gravitas.
The wind agreed, shifting from crisp breeze to frigid gust. Sherlock hesitated—one...two...three seconds. His eyes fluttered shut, tempting fate to snatch the card from his lazy custody.
And so what if it did? The possibility thrilled him.
He tracked the gilded square on an imaginary flight from Talbot Green back to London, following its progress over fallow fields and dull-witted towns. Rising and falling like the pen strokes knit into its posh weave until it crash-landed in the muck at the edge of the Thames. Just under Vauxhall Bridge.
A corner of his mouth kicked up as he envisioned the pristine stationery (Fraser and Parsley. A6. 300gsm.) bloated as a corpse from river water and sediment. Intense ink (Aurora. Black. 125N.) bleeding out the linen's pores.
Another blast of cold air forced Sherlock's hand. Literally. Eyes still closed, he slapped his palm against his leg, trapping the note there before the wind could make off with it. All fine and well for him to mangle the little card. Another thing entirely to cede it to the elements. He slid his hand down the length of his long thigh then back up again in a slow, absentminded manner, smoothing out the dents.
Reverence and scorn in equal measure. As far back as he could remember.
"Shezza?"
Sherlock's eyes flew open at the sound of his nom de guerre.
He didn't answer.
"Christ! It's fuckin' cold!" Billy stomped his feet in an attempt to get warm. "Shezza? D'ya hear me?"
No.
Sherlock continued to plane his palm down the leg of his black jeans.
"I said I could only go as far as Leeds."
"Hmm," Sherlock grunted.
"Yeah. My nan's sick. Anyway. You know how families are."
Sherlock stilled. Yes. He absolutely knew. He'd a dozen notes attesting to his intimate knowledge of how families are—one-sided correspondence in various states of dishevelment. Shoved to the bottom of his rucksack and bound together with twine.
Twelve in all.
Thirteen after this morning's delivery.
"Anyway, So Leeds is about 14 miles up the canal. What'dya make of our chances at a ride, then?" Billy fairly vibrated, eager for Sherlock to offer up a clever solution to their lack of motorised transport.
"Hmm."
Deflated, Billy tried a different tack. "Well, anyway... You always say 'sa good stretch of the legs' or something like that. Leeds is a good stretch a' the legs, then, innit?"
"Hmm." Sherlock focused on the horizon and his future. He'd made no plans beyond Talbot Green. Of course, he'd no plans in Talbot Green, either, having drifted this far north along a dissolute Roman road of sorts.
A route dotted with doss houses.
Now, however...He'd found the card affixed to his makeshift tent. Its message went off like a starter pistol in his head.
With Mycroft at the trigger.
Sherlock could continue on his haphazard course, battling imaginary dragons. Or, he could return to London...
The city taunted him at every turn. She winked at him from racks of faded postcards. She sidled up beside him at the newsagents. She whispered in his ear when he finally gave in to sleep, teasing him like a fan-dancer with her half-images: Whitechapel and Croyden, Brixton and Soho. Dead bodies piling up quicker than the Yard could process.
Suicides.
Murders.
Hidden within the brevity of the note was Mycroft's tacit mea culpa: As much as it pains me to admit it, brother mine, you were right. The deaths are, indeed, murders. Mycroft never used few words, even in the abstract, when many would do.
"I said, you 'ungry, Shezza?" Billy slung his pack over his shoulder, angling for a free meal, unaware that Sherlock had less than 50p on him. "I'm sure I can convince Bea to toss on a fry-up for you..." He trailed off. Both men knew that the odds of a plate piled high with breakfast—or anything else—coming Sherlock's way was about as unlikely where Bea was concerned as him eating it.
Still.
A celebration seemed in order. Never mind that Mycroft had summoned him back to London as though he still a schoolboy in short trousers, lonely for his big brother's attention and eager to please. Adrenaline tripped Sherlock's wires like a speedball, firing up neurons that had gone cold. He shrugged off the nagging truth, that his brain craved a respite from the wheel his brother had set him on.
He squashed the card in his fist once more and flashed Billy a calculated, tight-lipped grin. After a lengthy suspension of play, "the game" had resumed. Now all he had to do was find a cheap conveyance back to the city. Preferably one that wouldn't arouse Mycroft's notice.
Sherlock shoved his fists into the pockets of his greatcoat and pointed his chin toward the towpath. "I'm gasping for a cup of tea," he said and took off toward town without looking back.