***Recap***
(Sherlock just looks at him sternly as Nikki glares at him. John shakes his head as if to say, 'Silly me. What was I thinking?!')
Sherlock (to Lestrade): So where are we?
Lestrade (picking up another pair of latex gloves): Upstairs.
***Now***
(Lestrade leads the trio up a circular staircase. Nikki, Sherlock and John are wearing coveralls together with white cotton coverings over their shoes, and latex gloves. Sherlock is putting on latex gloves as they go up the stairs.)
Lestrade: I can give you two minutes.
Sherlock (casually): May need longer.
Lestrade: Her name's Jennifer Wilson according to her credit cards. We're running them now for contact details. Hasn't been here long. Some kids found her.
(He leads them into a room two storeys above the ground floor. The room is empty of furniture except for a rocking horse in the far corner. Emergency portable lighting has been set up, presumably by the police. Scaffolding poles hold up part of the ceiling near where a couple of large holes have been knocked through one of the walls. A woman's body is lying face down on the bare floorboards in the middle of the room.)
(She is wearing a bright pink overcoat and high-heeled pink shoes. Her hands are flat on the floor either side of her head. Sherlock walks a few steps into the room and then stops, holding one hand out in front of himself as he focuses on the corpse. Behind him, Nikki leaned against the wall opposite of the woman's body, John looks at the woman's body and his face fills with pain and sadness. The four of them stand there silently for several long seconds, then Sherlock looks across to Lestrade.)
Sherlock: Shut up.
Lestrade (startled): I didn't say anything.
Sherlock: You were thinking. It's annoying.
(Nikki laughed while Lestrade and John exchange a surprised look as Sherlock stepped slowly forward until he reaches the side of the corpse. His attention is immediately drawn to the fact that scratched into the floorboards near the woman's left hand is the word "Rache". His eyes flick to her fingernails where the index and middle nails are broken and ragged at the ends, the pink nail polish chipped in stark comparison to her other nails which are still immaculate. The woman's index finger rests at the bottom of the 'e' as if she was still trying to carve into the floor when she died. Sherlock makes an instant deduction:
left handed)
(He looks back to the word carved into the floorboards and an immediate suggestion springs into his mind:
RACHE
German (n.) revenge)
(Instantly he shakes his head in a tiny dismissive movement and the suggestion disappears. He looks at the carved word again and overlays the five letters with a clearer type. Next to the 'e' a rapid progression of letters appear and disappear as he tries to complete the word, then the correct letter settles into place to form the word:
Rachel)
(He squats down beside the body and runs his gloved hand along the back of her coat, then lifts his hand again to look at his fingers:
wet)
(He reaches into her coat pockets and finds a white folding umbrella in one of them. Running his fingers along the folds of the material, he then inspects his glove again:
dry)
(Putting the umbrella back into her pocket, he moves up to the collar of her coat and runs his fingers underneath it before again looking at his fingers:
wet)
(Reaching into his pocket he takes out a small magnifier, clicks it open and closely inspects the delicate gold bracelet on her left wrist ...
clean)
(... then the gold earring attached to her right ear ...
clean)
(... and then the gold chain around her neck ...
clean)
(... before moving on to look at the rings on her left ring finger. The wedding ring and engagement ring flag a different message to him:
dirty)
(Sherlock blinks as a rapid succession of conclusions appear in front of his eyes:
married
unhappily married
unhappily married 10+ years)
(Carefully Sherlock works the wedding ring off the woman's finger and holds it up to look at the inside of the ring. While the outside of the ring is still showing
dirty)
(The inside registers as
clean)
(As Sherlock lowers the ring and slides it back onto the woman's finger, he has already reached a conclusion about the ring:
regularly removed)
(Lifting his hands away from the woman, he looks down at her and makes his final deduction about her:
serial adulterer)
(He smiles slightly in satisfaction before looking to his make to see to his surprise that Nikki had come to the same conclusions that he had.)
Lestrade: Got anything?
Sherlock (nonchalantly): Not much.
(Standing up, he takes off the gloves and then gets his mobile phone from his pocket and begins typing on it.)
Anderson (from where he is leaning casually against the doorway): She's German. 'Rache': it's German for 'revenge.' She could be trying to tell us something ...
(While he was speaking, Nikki has walked quickly towards the door and closed it in Anderson's face.)
Sherlock (sarcastically): Yes, thank you for your input. (looking at his mate briefly) Thank you, love.
(On his phone, he has called up a menu for "UK Weather". The menu offers five options:
Maps
Local
Warnings
Next 24 hrs
7-day forecast
He selects the Maps option.)
Lestrade: So she's German?
Nikki: Nope.
Sherlock (still looking at his phone): Of course, she's not. She's from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night ... (he smiles smugly when he apparently finds the information he needed) ... before returning home to Cardiff.
(He pockets his phone.)
Sherlock: So far, so obvious.
John: Sorry - obvious?
Lestrade: What about the message, though?
Sherlock (ignoring him and looking at John): Doctor Watson, what do you think?
John: Of the message?
(Nikki rolled her eyes at John's question. It was obvious to her that Sherlock wanted to test out his new flatmate.)
Sherlock: Of the body. You're a medical man.
Lestrade: Wait, no, we have a whole team right outside.
Nikki: They won't work with him.
Lestrade: I'm breaking every rule letting you in here.
Sherlock: Yes ... because you need us.
(Lestrade stares at him for a moment, then lowers his eyes helplessly.)
Lestrade: Yes, I do. God help me.
Sherlock: Doctor Watson.
John: Hm?
(He looks up from the body to Nikki, before he looks at Sherlock and then turns his head towards Lestrade, silently seeking his permission.)
Lestrade (a little tetchily): Oh, do as he says. Help yourself.
(He turns and opens the door, going outside.)
Lestrade: Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes.
(Sherlock and John walk over to the body while Nikki stands by the door in case anyone enters. Sherlock squats down on one side of it and John painfully lowers himself to one knee on the other side, leaning heavily on his cane to support himself.)
Sherlock: Well?
John (softly): What am I doing here?
Sherlock (softly, but Nikki still heard him loud and clear): Helping me make a point.
John (softly): I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent.
Sherlock (softly): Yeah, well, this is more fun.
John: Fun? There's a woman lying dead.
Sherlock: Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper.
( Nikki laughs as Lestrade comes back into the room and stands just inside the doorway, and John drags his other leg down into a kneeling position and then leans forward to look more closely at the woman's body. He puts his head close to hers and sniffs, then straightens a little before lifting her right hand and looking at the skin. He kneels up and looks across to Sherlock.)
John: Yeah ... Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs.
Sherlock: You know what it was. You've read the papers.
John: What, she's one of the suicides? The fourth ...?
Lestrade: Sherlock - two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got.
Sherlock (standing up, while John struggles to get to his feet before Nikki suddenly appears next to him helping John up): The victim is in her late thirties. Professional person, going by her clothes; I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Traveled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It's obvious from the size of her suitcase.
Lestrade: Suitcase?
(John looks around the room but can't see a suitcase anywhere.)
Nikki: Suitcase, yes. She's been married at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married.
(The three men look at her in shock that she had noticed the same things that Sherlock had without moving from her spot by the door.)
Lestrade: Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up ...
Sherlock (pointing down to her left hand at the same time as Nikki does): Her wedding ring. Ten years old at least. The rest of her jewelry has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage right there. The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside - that means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It's not for work; look at her nails. She doesn't work with her hands, so what or rather who does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover; she'd never sustained the fiction of being single over that amount of time, so more likely a string of them. Simple.
John (admiringly): That's brilliant.
(Sherlock looks round at him. Nikki looked at her mate with nothing but pride.)
John: Sorry.
Lestrade: Cardiff?
Sherlock: It's obvious, isn't it?
John: It's not obvious to me.
Sherlock (pausing as he looks at the other two): Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring.
(He turns back to the body.)
Nikki (cutting her mate off): Her coat: it's slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind - too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can't have traveled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time?
(Sherlock looks at the hybrid in amazement and shock before he gets his phone from his pocket and shows the other two the webpage he was looking at earlier, displaying today's weather for the southern part of Britain.)
Sherlock: Cardiff.
John: That's fantastic!
Sherlock (turning to him and speaking in a low voice): D'you know you do that out loud?
John: Sorry. I'll shut up.
Sherlock: No, it's ... fine.
Lestrade: Why d'you keep saying suitcase?
Sherlock (spinning around in a circle to look around the room): Yes, where is it? She must have had a phone or an organizer. Find out who Rachel is.
Lestrade: She was writing 'Rachel'?
Nikki (sarcastically): No, she was leaving an angry note in German! Of course, she was writing Rachel; no other word it can be. Question is: why did she wait until she was dying to write it?
Lestrade: How d'you know she had a suitcase?
Sherlock (pointing down to the body, where her tights have small black splotches on the lower part of her right leg): Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying one night.
(He squats down by the woman's body and examines the backs of her legs more closely.)
Sherlock: Now, where is it? What have you done with it?
Lestrade: There wasn't a case.
(Slowly Sherlock raises his head and frowns up at Lestrade.)
Sherlock: Say that again.
Lestrade: There wasn't a case. There was never any suitcase.
(Immediately Sherlock straightens up and heads for the door, Nikki following him closely, calling out to all the police officers in the house as he begins to hurry down the stairs.)
Sherlock: Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?
(Lestrade and John follow the mates out and stop on the landing. Lestrade calls down the stairs.)
Lestrade: Sherlock, Nikki, there was no case!
Sherlock (slowing down, but still making his way down the stairs): But they take the poison themselves; they chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn't miss them.
Lestrade: Right, yeah, thanks! And ...?
Sherlock: It's murder, all of them. I don't know how, but they're not suicides, they're killings - serial killings.
(He holds his hands up in front of his face in delight. Nikki knew that this case was just what the consulting detective needed for a distraction.)
Sherlock: We've got ourselves a serial killer. I love those. There's always something to look forward to.
Lestrade: Why are you saying that?
Sherlock (stopping and calling up to the others): Her case! Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it? Someone else was here, and they took her case. (more quietly, as if talking to himself or Nikki) So the killer must have driven her here; forgot the case was in the car.
John: She could have checked into a hotel, and left her case there.
Nikki (joining her mate's side looked up the stairs again): No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair. She colour-coordinated her lipstick and her shoes. She'd never have left any hotel with her hair still looking ...
(She stops talking as they make a realization.)
Nikki/Sherlock: Oh.
(His eyes widen and his face lights up. Nikki also beaming in delight.)
Sherlock: Oh!
(He claps his hands together in delight before grabbing hold of Nikki's.)
John: Sherlock?
Lestrade (leaning over the railings): What is it, what?
Sherlock (smiling cheerfully to himself): Serial killers are always hard. You have to wait for them to make a mistake.
Lestrade: We can't just wait!
Sherlock: Oh, we're done waiting!
(He starts to hurry down the stairs again, pulling Nikki along with him.)
Sherlock: Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake. Get on to Cardiff: find out who Jennifer Wilson's family and friends were. Find Rachel!
(The two mates reach the bottom of the stairs and disappear from view.)
Lestrade (calling after him): Of course, yeah - but what mistake?!
(Nikki and Sherlock comes back into view and runs up a couple of stairs so that he can be seen before he stops and yells up to Lestrade.)
Nikki/Sherlock: PINK!