The Consulting Hacker

Talks

Chapter Seventeen

"Sherlock, have you figured out that spontaneous fire case yet?"

"I told you before, John, those fires aren't spontaneous," Sherlock paused before he carried on talking, "Have you not noticed how each one was within walking distance of a tube station?"

"Is that significant?"

"Yes, John, it is. This is the arsonists mode of transport, and how the victims arrived at their destination."

"So, the murderer followed them on the tube?"

"Yes, isn't that obvious?"

"Just confirming. So all we need to do is find the common tube line that connects them together?"

"There is no correlation."

"Then that was a dead end?"

"No. All stations that the deaths happened at were in zones one, two and three."

"So this person has a zone one-to-three travel card."

"Yes, narrowing our search very quickly."

"Not that much Sherlock, even zones one-to-three is quite a large area."

"It's not just that John, but magnesium."

"I don't see how that helps, we only know the method of their deaths, we still don't know how all these people are connected."

"Common ground, they all smoked."

"That doesn't mean anything, that could have been a coincidence."

"The probability of that being a coincidence is very low. And it's like the Jack the Ripper case."

"I thought you said that you didn't care for those kind of things?"

"Care for what?"

"Victorian crimes."

"Oh, I don't, but I need an example, and the was the first thing that came up."

"So how has Jack the Ripper got anything to do with this case."

"The prostitutes had no connection with each other apart from the fact that they were prostitutes and the way they died."

"I get where you're coming from, but smoking is such a vague connection."

"Of course, it's not just the smoking, there are obviously other connections, but they are not apparent to us yet."

"Okay. But you'll figure that out soon anyway. So how is magnesium going to narrow our search?"

"Finding areas of work that magnesium is used in."

"Chemists."

"Yes and no."

"Are you not going to give me a direct answer?" The quiet rolling of wheels could be heard downstairs as John finished talking.

"How long have you been listening, Cate?"

"How long do you think Sherlock?" Came the response from the bottom of the staircase.

"Since my point on the tube zones correlating with the deaths."

"Yup!"

"Wait, why didn't you say anything Sherlock?" John turned to face Sherlock after turning towards the staircase.

"I did, I increased the volume of my talking."

"Really? I didn't notice."

"Let's pay a visit to our neighbour shall we?"