Over My Dead Body

by Dave Warner

  She punched in the code and entered the familiar gloom of her modern cave. With Noah at large, and outside a tempest starting to blow, she was comforted by the familiar outline of Jason, the security guard, but five strides in across the marble floor, that sense of well-being fled. It wasn’t Jason standing there.

  ‘Evening, ma’am.’

  The man was about thirty, he looked fit, muscular.

  ‘Jason’s not on tonight?’

  ‘No ma’am, he had an accident apparently. I’m his replacement.’

  He had a badge across his pocket which proclaimed the name Sheffield.

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me. Nothing too serious, I don’t think. I’m sorry, ma’am, but may I see your identification card?’

  Georgette handed her card across. Sheffield studied it.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor Watson. I’ll remember you next time.’

  He pressed the button and Georgette entered through the security gate and thanked him.

  ‘Sheffield is your last name?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. First name is Dwayne.’

  ‘Thank you, Dwayne.’ She was going to ask him to try and find out more about Jason but then realized she’d be better served asking Steven next time she was here during the day.

  Stepping back into her lab was an odd, dislocated feeling, like she’d been abroad for a long time and just returned home. It had been less than forty-eight hours. Theoretically the hamsters could survive for days in their cages. She had fed them fresh food two days ago and left them carrot pieces, seeds and so on. There was also a special self-serve trigger they could hit for nutritious pellets, and each cage was supplied with a similar mechanism that delivered fresh water. All the same, she did not like them being left continually in a small cage and so she would have special hours where they could enjoy themselves in a ‘natural habitat’ area she had created for them. Being nocturnal creatures, this recreation took place in the dark. Some breeds of hamsters were loners who would attack any other hamster they perceived as being on their territory but Georgette used a breed that were happy to socialize. All up, there had been fourteen hamsters in her program. The area of sand and grasses that she had created in a large perspex tub was not big enough for all fourteen at once so she would split them into two groups but tonight, having limited time, she decided they could all squeeze in together. She began transferring the animals from their cages. Zoe, her very first hamster, looked listless and had barely touched her food. That was a concern. Hamsters, from her experience, lived on average around two years. It had been fourteen months since she had revived Zoe after she had been ‘dead’ eleven minutes. That would make her less than eighteen months old.

  ‘What’s up, Zoe?’ she asked, tenderly checking the small creature. Her phone rang. Simone.

  ‘Sherlock wanted me to check you made it in safely.’

  ‘I’m fine, you can assure him.’

  ‘How’s my plant doing?’

  Shredded like a sail after a cannon blast. She’d have to ditch it.

  ‘Thriving.’ Something was definitely up with Zoe.

  ‘I thought you, me and Sherlock might go clubbing after.’

  ‘I’d rather swallow hot razor blades.’ Georgette was reluctant to put Zoe with the other hamsters in case she had some disease.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t think you should be clubbing with some maniac on the loose in Manhattan.’

  ‘There’s always some maniac on the loose in Manhattan.’

  Okay, she couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘Catch you later, then.’

  When Simone rang off, Georgette once more felt very alone. Leaving Holmes in the hands of her sister would normally have given her a seizure but right now her concern was Zoe. Georgette adored these creatures. She spared a thought for her father. Imagine having a real daughter to worry about. She checked each of them over, made sure they had fresh water and feed. At nine-thirty, Simone rang again to say they had met Valerian the hacker and that he assured them he would have names within twelve hours. She had driven Ambrose home and left Holmes in Alphabet City. Instant alarm bells.

  ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  ‘You just left him?’

  ‘He’s a grown man, what should I have done?’

  Shackled him, maybe. Hit him over the head. First Zoe, and now Holmes on the loose, unsupervized. Simone was talking again.

  ‘Hey, sooner or later you need to trust him. He made me promise to call you and tell you to go straight home. Said he would see you there. He’s cute.’

  ‘Let’s not have this conversation again.’

  ‘No, let’s do. You’ve got him all to yourself. Don’t waste this opportunity, over and out. And sis …’

  What now, a loan request? Georgette braced for it.

  ‘… thanks for letting me be part of this. It means a lot you trust me. I won’t screw up.’

  She ended the call and Georgette felt chastened. Typical Simone, just when you thought you had her on toast, she flipped you over.

  A little over an hour later, her Lyft dropped Georgette back to the apartment. The rain had eased slightly. She entered the lobby and remembered she had laundry to pick up from the basement. It had been wrong of her to leave her bedsheets in the dryer but Gwendoline, the elderly former schoolteacher, laundered every day and politely put whoever’s laundry was left in a dryer into buckets for them. Unless Georgette got her laundry now, she’d feel like it needed washing again. She took the elevator to the basement. She never liked coming down here. The corridor was bare brick and ill lit and, even though the boilers were here, it was always cold.

  Pure darkness greeted her when the doors opened. She quickly hit the round button on the wall and a creamy, blue glow was roused and reluctantly pointed the way down the corridor to the laundry room. Hustling down the short corridor, she reached the laundry, which was in total darkness. She pressed its light button. Overhead fluorescent lights kicked in but one wasn’t working and another constantly flickered, so again she was left with light as miserable as charity and in the end had to use her phone. As she’d hoped, her sheets were in a bucket stacked on top of three others.

  ‘Bless you, Gwendoline,’ she whispered to herself and put the phone down on the narrow bench to pick up the washing, then froze at the loud bang of the staircase door. Nobody in here used the stairs. The light from her phone went out and she was back with just that flickering fluoro.

  Why would anybody use the stairs?

  With terrifying swiftness, she found an answer: to avoid the camera in the elevator. Footsteps slowly advanced down the corridor. She looked desperately for a weapon, anything, but it was a laundry, clear and bare and –

  The steps reached the doorway and stopped. She grabbed for her phone but in her haste, knocked it straight off the bench. It clattered on the concrete floor.

  Holmes stepped into the room.

  She was flooded with a mix of relief and annoyance. ‘For goodness sake, Holmes!’

  ‘My apologies if I alarmed you. I had been waiting outside and then I saw you return.’

  ‘What were you doing outside? Smoking?’

  ‘And keeping watch. One can’t be too careful.’

  She wished he hadn’t said that for it brought back that wave of terror that had drowned her just moments earlier.

  A short time later they were seated in the apartment. Rain still fell, the lamps turning the street to a glistening seal-skin. Georgette stepped back from her window, her hands warmed by the mug of steaming tea. Holmes’ effort was far more drinkable than Simone’s, and he had made a large pot of pea-and-ham soup which was simmering on the stove. She could get used to this.

  ‘I have to say, I had thought milk in cartons to be the most splendid advance since Queen Victoria but in truth, milk does taste better in glass. Teabags on the other hand are a superlative saver of time and space, though I pity the Enderbys.’

&
nbsp; ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Family that lived two along from us. He was a potter and glazier, specialty teapots.’

  ‘What were you doing down the Lower East Side?’

  ‘Nostalgia. The last time I was in Manhattan I found myself on a matter of some import that involved a sea captain with a twin brother.’

  ‘I’d like to hear some of your tales.’

  ‘Of course. I would be only too happy –’

  His eyes had diverted to the gift she was offering, a spare phone she had kept in her bedroom drawer. ‘I thought you might be able to make use of this,’ she said.

  He was like a child. ‘I shall treasure this always, Watson.’

  She showed him the basics. ‘And remember to keep it charged.’

  He pocketed the phone.

  ‘So Valerian has taken the commission?’

  ‘He was pleased to do so. He promises results forthwith.’ He checked his watch. ‘The soup should be ready but don’t allow your expectations to get too high. I have never been much of a cook.’ He nipped into the kitchen to check on progress. It only occurred to her now to ask where he had got the money for the ingredients.

  ‘Were you street performing again?’ She had to raise her voice above the clatter of aluminium.

  ‘No, the money, you might say, came to me.’ There was a terrible clang. She willed herself not to look. ‘Just as I was concluding my sightseeing I was inveigled by a flimflam man to see if I could determine under which thimble I might locate the pea and thereby earn myself twenty dollars.’

  ‘You can’t win at those games. The pea is never even under the cup.’

  ‘Of course not. Believe me, Watson, the game has been around longer than I and, as you know, that is a considerable time.’ Holmes emerged with two steaming bowls of soup and placed them on the only table in the room, the small coffee table. He presented a spoon and folded napkin at its side, as a waiter might and with a hand signal bade her sit. Georgette did and Holmes sat opposite on the armchair.

  ‘In fact I did not even have the stake to bet on the pea initially, merely two single dollar notes you had generously bestowed upon me, but it was child’s play to spy the shill, a well-dressed young woman who naturally won. I congratulated her on her win and in doing so lifted her so called “winnings” back off her, using that as my stake.’

  ‘Was that stealing?’

  ‘Yes, however, stealing from a thief is a lower grade of theft in my opinion.’

  ‘But you still lost.’

  ‘Of course I lost but before I handed over my two ten-dollar notes, which was really their money, I made a great show of looking for the pea to see where it really was, and while the flimflam man was busy returning the pea – which of course had never been there – I switched a single dollar note for a ten. So, I handed over eleven dollars, leaving us with a profit of nine dollars and the means to buy the soup you have before you.’

  Which, she was pleased to find, was tasty.

  ‘Edible?’

  ‘Excellent. Thank you.’

  ‘I am not good at this, I know, but there was occasion when I had to prepare food for myself and so I restricted my ambitions to just two items: boiled eggs, and pea-and-ham soup. Your great-great-grandfather was, I’m afraid, far worse a cook than I, and could boast no fare at all.’

  ‘Did my great-great also act as a kind of Medici benefactor to your art of detection?’

  He chuckled. ‘You know, as generous as he was, your progenitor did not have your turn of phrase. In answer to your question, yes, he did support me from time to time but he told me more than once that I enriched his life more than any novel or play and that he was grateful I was in it. We did manage a number of journeys abroad in which I was able through my work to provide for him.’

  ‘The books make him seem …’

  ‘Stolid.’

  ‘… yes, that is a good word for it.’

  ‘By and large Conan Doyle rendered him accurately for one who was looking at our relationship from the outside but your great-great was not as conservative as he allowed himself to be portrayed. There was, not far beneath the surface, a rich vein of devilment which he preferred to mask. Understandable for one of his profession. He valued his status, his clubs, his regimental companions and so forth but he was his own man when it came to determining the morality of our actions. He would not defend a royal personage for example, simply on account of their royalty. His senses may have been dull in determining the nuances of peoples of different races and religions but he would tip over a prejudice as easily as a hurricane would capsize a dinghy. In the mind of Watson, a man’s actions determined his character, not his upbringing or tittle-tattle.’

  ‘Did you often clash?’

  ‘Frequently. I would suggest one course of action, he another. We respected one another and acted as counterbalances. I doubt I ever once foisted my values upon him but I cannot recall a single occasion in which he ultimately refused to aid my enterprise.’

  ‘A good friend.’

  ‘The best, but as I say, for all his good points, and they were numerous, Watson was never one for the verbal joust.’

  ‘Humorless?’

  ‘Earnest to the border but not beyond. He saw humor in simple things where the joke completely escaped me: a man tripping over a cart, a singing dog and so forth.’ He looked keenly at her, his spoon poised. ‘Watson, I should feel privileged if you would at some point discourse with me on your research.’

  Not only did this surprise her but his interest made her feel, for some reason, embarrassed. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Everything. While the world at large would turn your efforts into a circus act, this does not negate the stupendous scientific leap you have made.’

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps you would like to come back to my lab one day as a guest rather than a subject?’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  Her phone rang. It was Benson.

  ‘Hi, Garry.’

  ‘Sorry to take so long. It’s been quite a day. We picked up a fingerprint in the church. Guy named Ricky Coleman with a sex assault history. CCTV shows him on the street a block away and very close to the time Lucy Bassey must have entered the church. We’ve been chasing him all day. I’ve only got five minutes as it is, we’re heading to a KA of his upstate.’

  It sounded like he was calling from the car.

  ‘Percy and I came up with some information we thought might be important.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  She told him as quickly as she could about the book and how they had followed up to find out that four people had attended Scheer’s discussion group. She heard him exhale the way annoyed people do, loud enough so you know they are annoyed.

  ‘Georgi, I appreciate your efforts but please, leave the police work to us. That goes for your friend too. Especially for him.’

  ‘Of course, but when Scheer called me, I couldn’t ignore him.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it just as soon as. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Your old man would skin me alive.’

  She thought it best she say nothing about their hacking efforts.

  ‘Soon as we grab Coleman, I’ll follow it up. Maybe Coleman got a hold of the book somehow. Thanks.’ She could tell he was about to sign off but he held up. ‘And listen, when this is done, let’s have a drink.’

  She felt herself going prickly, Holmes eyeballing her. ‘Of course.’

  She ended the call, and gave a summary, omitting the final overture from Benson.

  Holmes scowled. ‘Over one hundred years and their competence does not increase.’

  ‘It sounds like they have a strong lead.’

  ‘Except that a murderer who is clever enough to cut somebody’s throat without seemingly getting blood on themselves, and does not leave DNA or allow himself to be photographed, is bumbling enough to leave a fingerprint. That does not jibe, Watson, no most decidedly not.’ Holmes twirled the spoon in his hand. ‘We have little time. O
nce he takes the zebra, Noah is, to use a metaphor, in unchartered waters.’

  The bottle of wine she had bought was not chilled yet, so she put it in the freezer to hurry it along. At fifteen dollars it was on the pricey side but she wanted to make a good impression. Ditto the waxing, painful, but her girlfriends said men expected it these days. Darn, she really wanted to take a sip of that wine herself, right now, to settle herself down. It had been a long time between drinks. She smiled at her pun. She had absolutely no concerns about her lasagna. Half her life she had been preparing that dish. It sat ready in the oven. And there would be plenty left over which she could freeze for lunch or dinner. Earlier she had been excited by the beautiful lace underwear which she had been able to get at a ridiculous sale price. Nobody could afford the list price, nobody she knew, but she’d been watching and knew they always discounted before Black Friday. She had been ready and waiting. There was no guarantee it would be on show tonight. Okay, she hoped it was, that it got to that stage, but he liked to take things slow, he’d said, and so it was no definite thing. And if it didn’t get that far, it was still nice to be wearing classy underwear. You look back at your life, at the mistakes, especially Joey – ‘mistake’ hardly seemed adequate, but then again they were so young – but you looked back now, and you realized what it had cost you: classy underwear, a decent job and, most of all, peace of mind. She’d practically buried herself. Like in the old days they used to send you to a convent and girls would become nuns and never speak again. Well of course, she hadn’t stopped speaking but she had definitely withdrawn behind walls, and they didn’t have to be made out of stone.

  She took herself back into the bedroom because that had the best mirror. Another quick once over with the brush wouldn’t hurt. She thought she heard something, just a click. Was it him? Had he come a few minutes early? Her bell hadn’t rung. Maybe he’d knocked though. Some people are so used to bells not working that they knock. She put the brush down and walked back along the short corridor towards the door. The light was dim and romantic, vintage lampshades over which she had draped a light sarong, just to take the edge off. The table had candles but she hadn’t lit them yet. That could wait …