The Progress of Sherlock Holmes

Penrose Man

Murder (obvious).

Anderson insists on calling it an industrial accident. Accident? With marks like those on the wrists? (Twine: plastic threads. Wrapped around the wrists fourteen times. Snipped off after death with nail clippers, inexpertly disposed of. Will probably find them in a bin nearby.) With the remains of a boot print (industrial, steel-toed, dust and remains from a large flat-pack warehouse, filled primarily with plywood) on the bottom of the trousers, and there, along the left thigh? Did he fail to notice the fingerprint left on the side of the drill that will most assuredly not match those of the murder victim nor anyone who works in the plant? Outrageous! Appalling! And this is what passes for forensic expertise at Scotland Yard? He should never have been allowed to leave primary school. I’ve seen his forensic reports. Still hasn’t learned where to include/not include an apostrophe. Rubbish! He has the gall to disparage me to Lestrade and try to keep me off a crime scene, but he thinks this is an industrial accident? (Clearly, idiots can be fooled by just about anyone.)

Can’t even look at him. “Since you’re clearly both blind and deaf, play dumb as well.” He starts to protest but I tune him out. Wave a hand in his direction, dismiss him. Lestrade will take care of it. Kneel: the rib twinges with a reasonable but not completely debilitating amount of pain. That’s good. Debilitating pain is even more distracting than Anderson’s ponderously plodding thought processes. (I do miss John’s careful ministrations though, which are no longer regularly required. Temptation: get injured in order to be so tenderly cared for again. Pathetic. Ridiculous. But his hands. Those heady moments of closeness. Foreign and awkward and marvelous all at once. Impossible to ever feel used to it.) Slide the phone out of the victim’s pocket; read the last three texts. Lestrade is ordering Anderson off. He’s useless. More than useless; he gets in my way.

The body is surrounded by curls of wood, which are still lightly falling from the machines above like snowflakes. The lathes above had to be stopped quickly, and the refuse from their labours had covered the floor with bits of wood. It smells like a cedar forest, pried open and lightly burned.

Interesting the way the drill corkscrewed through the brain; left an interesting pattern of bone. Broken in every direction, in seemingly arbitrary ways, fractured in wavy lines. Broken like glass, like ice. So many variables inside a living skull. Force plus a slow and steady counter-clockwise spin of uniformly twisted metal creates a unique signature on unsteady human bone. Near-infinite possibilities at each millimetre. And the impact on the brain is spectacular; pulled apart into plaits, draped out of the broken skull like silk. Beautiful. Could gather that brain into a bouquet and put it in a vase to admire it. At least until it started to smell. (More experimentation required: could procure another head from Bart’s, certainly. Drill bits in a box under the stairs. Corkscrew? In the drawer. John’s? Mine? Don’t remember. Does it matter? Might manage to steal industrial drill bit instead; preferable. Place the head in a vice for stability? Or just wedge it between the microwave and the toaster? That would do the trick.)

(John. He might not appreciate another head on the kitchen worktop.)

Glance over at him; he’s looks pale and shocked, distressed. Look back at the body, tilt head, imagine seeing it through John’s eyes, John’s humane, gentle, caring eyes; an awkward death, certainly. Unpleasant. Painful. Frightening. Is that how John sees it? He’s seen enough of the insides of men, he’s not squeamish. Is it empathy? Does he imagine what it would have felt like, himself in this man’s place, a wide corkscrew moving slowly toward him, the minutes between feeling it pierce the skin on his forehead and the point when his brain extrudes through fractures in his skull?

(Wait. No. Stop. Deep breath.)

Don’t much like imagining John as a victim of murder. Makes a bit of panic rise in the back of my throat. Blame Moriarty for that: burn the heart out of me, indeed. If it weren’t for him I might not have noticed, at least, not quite so soon. Caring isn’t a victory, not at all; my feelings put John Watson in far more danger than anything else does. More than the illegal Sig, more than flying bullets and rooftop chases and hired assassins. (If it were me, caught in such a position, the pending victim, hands tied behind my back with Ikea brand twine: an oddly fascinating train of thought. Can think of seven separate ways to escape before the drill bit moved an inch.) But no. Won’t imagine it with John. Not his brain, not hisskull. This bloody caring lark.