TBB: Chapter Four

[caulkhead]

"Say, thanks for seeing me back to my flat. It’s those little things that make British men so special, you know. Hey, want to come in for coffee?"

For a moment, Tim was tempted. He’d learnt a lot during the taxi ride. And there was something about a woman who would believe literally anything that he told her that was irresistibly appealing. Better not. My boss would kill me. And that’s probably not a metaphor.

“I’d love to, but I’d better be getting back. Early start tomorrow. Thank you for a lovely evening, though.”

She stretched out her arms, but he managed to catch one of them as it made for his neck, and brought it to his lips instead. Too over the top? Well, he had just spent the evening in the company of a romantic novelist. Might as well make the most of it. He gave something which might have been the ghost of a bow and turned away down the hall.

He was halfway to the lift when he heard her scream.

......

"There was someone there. There was someone in my flat!"

Tim held her, sobbing and trembling, in his arms, stroking slowly down her back in an attempt to calm her, while his eyes took a rapid inventory.

Furtniture overturned , cushions ripped up and turned inside out, drawers emptied on the floor, curtains torn from the open window. The place looked like the aftermath of a drugs bust in every movie he'd ever seen.

"We've got to call the police," he said, eventually. "I'll do it, if you like. We don't have to stay here till they come, though. Do you know anyone else in the building?"

"There's - there's Sherringford," she managed. "My neighbour. But I - I think he's out."

"I'll call John. You can't sleep here, and he's got at least three spare rooms besides the one I'm sleeping in."

She gulped again, visibly trying to get a hold on herself. "Taxi's gone by now. There's a cab rank round the corner."

"Not from a rank. I'll order a minicab."

The phone number he called was not, in fact, that of a minicab company - though he expected it would, in due course, produce a demonstrably authentic Mancuian minicab - and the very fact of his having used it would, he knew, set into motion an entire vast mechanism of surveillance and protection. He thought he noticed the CCTV cameras mounted on the lamp-post on Sackville Street twitch in their direction as they exited the building.

Message received and understood

"I've told them we'll wait for the cab in TriBeCa," he said. "Thank God the Village never sleeps."

He spent the next ten minutes frantically phoning and texting John, but getting no response. He'd just have to hope that nothing more compromising than washing up was happening over in Didsbury.

---

"Don't think you can try to pretend," John said, his voice loud in the gloomy, enormous kitchen. "I know you're here. After all, I can see the tip of your confederate's tail twitching from behind the wellington boots by the garden door. You might as well come out. Take pride in what you are. The world's only consulting cat burglar. At least; the world's only consulting cat burglar who can be relied on to bring his own cat."

Both Tobermory and Sherlock emerged from the shadows at the same time.

John looked at the cat. "All lobster remains have your name on them." He gestured towards the platter on the draining board, then smiled at Sherlock.

"Have you been waiting long?"

His flatmate inclined his head in a slight gesture of acknowledgement. "Since just before the teeth-gritting anecdote involving the sweat-lodge ritual in the Mojave desert, her totem spirit animal and the astral plane. Trust me, if that woman has a totem animal, it's a lemming. Look at this."

He produced a battered hardback book from an inner pocket of his coat. John looked at it.

"Um. And?"

"Um? And?" Sherlock gestured eloquently. "I stole it from her flat earlier this evening."

"You did what? Isn't she going to notice?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Not before I replace it tomorrow morning, My fingerprints are legitimately all over the flat, I'm in and out all day, she's horrifically disorganised as regards books and CDs – even if she spots it's been misplaced all I need do is confess having picked it up to take a look and put it back in the wrong shelf. Anyway; it's not hers to begin with. Stolen property. But how she got hold of it; there's the interesting question."

Sherlock's eyes were narrowing; the pace of his voice picked up. John recognised the symptoms. He grasped his flatmate around his narrow, bony wrists, pulling him closer to the kitchen table. "Not eaten, have you? Since when? Actually, forget that. Doesn't matter. There's a good dollop of the chocolate coffee refrigerator slice left. Neck that, and then tell me about the book. You'll thank me for the energy, when we're both dashing round Manchester."

Sherlock flopped down at the kitchen table and allowed John to fish the remains of the pudding from the fridge, turf it into a bowl and hand it to him. Tobermory, meanwhile, scoured the lobster carcases. Only when both of them seemed satisfied did John return to the attack.

"So. Book."

Sherlock did what John had privately catalogued as "that cat thing" with his face. Tobermory had just assumed a precisely similar expression.

"The Condition of the Working Class in England. First English language edition; published 1886 in New York. Already out of print by 1892, according to Engels' preface to the next English language edition. Not a very likely book for an American woman of that class and type to own in any edition. Unlikely to be intended for assistance in her blogging activities, even though it also centres around a foreigner's impressions of Manchester. I imagine dead communists are box office poison. Anyway, it's the edition only a serious collector would have. And here, on the fly-leaf, are the names of those collectors. "

"Ruth and Eddie Frow? Who're they?"

"Who were they," Sherlock corrected. "Very famous Manchester Communists. Also, the founders of the unique labour movement archive now housed in the Working Class Movement Library. Which is where this book was stolen from. The back-up memory stick's somewhere near the place on the shelf where this book ought to be. It's our blogger's insurance for retrieving the stick in case whoever she was working with to conceal the memory stick falls under a bus. Which is far from implausible, once Mycroft finds out what Dr X has been up to."

"Dr X?"

"Oh, do use your brains. He's an academic, working on labour history, hence his choice of a hiding place. Not a full professor; anyone who can navigate promotion fights in a tough academic climate develops more sense of self-preservation than to get involved in a mess like this. He's living beyond his means – "

"Hang on, how do you deduce that?"

"Anyone hanging out with that woman on a prolonged basis is by definition living beyond his means. I've even started to get sardonic texts from Anthea about my expenses. Have you any idea what it costs for a slow comfortable screw up against the wall in Cloud 23?"

"Given it's a glass wall, I'd say the payments ought to go the other way," John murmured. "Might cause a bit of a traffic pile-up on Deansgate, though."

Sherlock ignored him.

"Anyway, given his financial problems, he's after the holy grail of an impoverished historian; a BBC 2 six part series and tie-in book deal. She's got media connections; he's got gravitas - match made in heaven. At least, until these shennaigans blow up in his face. Which, of course, is only a matter of time. Until 10.02 am tomorrow morning, to be precise. Library opens at ten; minute and a half to find the USB stick; thirty seconds to tell Mycroft I've got it and who hid it. Because there's no way Mycroft is going to tolerate someone of Dr X's political views having had access to what's on that stick."

"Because he's a communist?"

"Oh, don't be an idiot. Trendy young Marxist academics who hang out in fashionable cocktail bars and pull pseudo-intellectual young women on the strength of their ruthless deconstruction of the capitalist mythos went out with the dodo. He's studying labour history; not trying to make it. Mycroft wouldn't be nearly so worried if he believed Dr X was in the CP."

"So what are his political views?"

"Academic, based in Manchester, looking for a BBC series? He's a card-carrying member of the LibDems, of course."

......

John was just putting away the last of the glasses, watched by two identical smiles of feline self-satisfaction, when a car door slammed outside. Tim's voice, slightly raised, drifted through the open window.

"It's fine, I'm sure John's still up. Look, the light's on."

The bell rang. John waved frantically at the door into the garden. "Out! Toby, you too. Christ knows what she wants at this hour." He closed the kitchen door on them both, ignoring Toby's tart "I can guess," and headed out into the hall.

Tim's face was white and tense under the light in the porch. The blogger looked like a woman in shock, face swollen with crying. Her hand, when he reached out to draw her inside, was ice cold. His training kicked in automatically.

"Come through into the living room, it's warmest. I'll make some tea. What happened?"

"Burglary," Tim said brusquely. "Whoever did it looked to have practically torn the place apart. But – you know, Manchester on Friday nights. The police said they couldn't send anybody till tomorrow morning, and the place is in no fit state to sleep in. "

"Sleep? I don't think I'll ever sleep again." She shuddered dramatically and shrank closer to Tim's side.

"Hmmm. I can probably prescribe you something to help with that, if you like?"

It's not unethical. She really does look like she needs it.

He rummaged in the desk for his pen, tore a prescription form from the pad in his briefcase. "Is there anywhere we could get it filled at this time of night?"

"There's the all night chemist in St Peter's Square," said Tim. "Means going back into the city centre, though."

"Well, none of us are in a fit state to drive tonight, and I suppose you let your mini-cab go? Damn. We could be waiting an hour if we phoned another. Anywhere closer?"

"There's a Tesco Superstore on Parrs Wood Road. That's walkable – probably about a mile and a half."

"Great. Do you think you could..."

"Oh, no. Please, stay here," She was actually clinging to Tim's jacket now.

John nodded. "Fine, I'll go myself. Probably just as well, in case the duty pharmacist gets itchy about it being a London clinic address on the prescription. Tim, if you could just point me in the right direction?"

Five minutes later, he was heading down the road. A familiar tread fell into step beside him.

"I couldn't lip read, the distance I was from the windows, but she's clearly not faking her response to whatever happened to her after leaving here."

"What happened? You happened. I thought you said you were being subtle. Sounds like you left her flat looking like that drugs bust Lestrade ran after on us after the Whitechapel poitin incident."

"John, Lestrade himself wouldn't have been able to tell anyone had been in that flat after I left it. Whoever did this burglary, it wasn't me."

.......

Just under an hour later, John let himself back into the house. Sherlock, still worrying away at the problem of the burglary, had melted away into the shadows of the garden, not without protest. Thirty seconds later, the door slammed open again.

“Sherlock. Get in here. Now.”

---

I have never understood human families; generally speaking, cats order matters so much more sensibly. Still, I had detected a certain amount of score-settling on Mycroft's part when he engaged his litter-mate on the current task, including a distinct if unstated air of "If you're so clever, work out what I'm not telling you".

Accordingly, I thought it prudent to be on paw while Tim offered tea and sympathy to the distraught blogger, even if for obvious reasons I had to remain out of sight. In any case, , the garden was distinctly damp and lacking in attractions, especially once John and Sherlock had set off on their trek to the supermarket. I re-entered the house by way of the smallest kitchen window, and made a stealthy approach to the living room.

"No, Tim, you don't understand! This wasn't a random break-in by some crack-head kids looking for something they could trade for their next hit. It was meant to send a message. I'm a target. I'm not safe."

"But do you have any idea what they could have been looking for?" Tim asked, kneeling by the side of the sofa and massaging her hands in a gesture in which I wished I could record and send to J. for research purposes (though Tim had probably got the idea from one of her less talented competitors in the romance novel department in the first place).

"Yes!" she sobbed dramatically. "It's another Watergate!"

That, of course, left me none the wiser. Fortunately, Tim seemed to think her explanation left a bit to be desired, too.

"Um, you mean you think you're the victim of a high-level Government conspiracy?"

His mingled tone of horror and disbelief really was particularly well done. In fact, if they handed out Oscars for "Best demonstration of bald-faced cheek by a public servant in the course of his duties" that performance would have been a very strong contender. And, as anyone familiar with my career will know, I'm a cat who's rubbed knees with the best in the business on that particular front.

"Of course I am!" she said passionately and, I had to concede, for once wholly accurately. Having followed her blog from the beginning, I started to fear the collapse of the space-time continuum must be at hand.

"Well, why? And do you think anyone else might be in danger too?"

Her hand went to her mouth. "Oh. My. God. I'd forgotten all about him. I need to make a phone call."

"Who to?" Tim asked.

"The academic guy. The one who hid the backup USB stick for me. That must have been what the bad guys were after. I don't know if they'll have found the original – I hid it in a pretty cunning place – but we agreed that if anything like this happened, I was to get in touch at once. Only I never thought – I thought he was getting his panties in a wad about Government surveillance because he's writing a book about spooks infiltrating British left-wing circles, and it's making him paranoid – "

"So you need to warn him he's next on the list to be burgled?" Tim really was sustaining his performance remarkably; I started to see why Mycroft Holmes thought of him as a young man worthy of his personal attention.

"Yeah, maybe, but he's not got the back-up at his flat -"

"Might the people who broke into your flat have discovered where he's actually hidden it?" Tim asked. "After all - um, if they are spooks, most likely they were able to hack into your computer."

She blinked and gulped. "Like I said, he's really freaky about security. He told me to put nothing in writing and definitely not on the computer. That's why we arranged the book code."

"The book code?" By this point, I thought, a trifle too much eagerness to find out what the hell was going on was starting to mar Tim's performance; understandable in a Civil Service high flyer about to plug one of the most potentially damaging leaks in history, but a bit on the cold-blooded side for a nice young man comforting a woman who'd been burgled, apparently by ruthless Government operatives. Fortunately, my critical faculties were considerably more finely tuned than hers.

She nodded, and wiped a hand across her tear-brimming eyes. Tim, on cue, fished out a linen handkerchief and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes and looked gratefully up at him.

"He's hidden it in a crack in the shelves in the library he's researching in. He gave me the book which is supposed to sit on the shelf above it, so if ever I needed to get it back, and he wasn't around, all I'd have to do is go and find the right shelf and it'd lead me straight to the USB stick."

Tim's jaw dropped; possibly at anyone thinking a plan which involved this woman walking into a strange library and decoding its cataloguing system on sight could possibly be filed under anything other than "Catastrophe: waiting to happen."

"God, I hope the burglars didn't steal the book," he said. "Not that they'd know its value, but they looked to have given everything a pretty thorough going over. I'd better make sure we check it's there when we go back to talk to the police in the morning." He paused. "But it doesn't matter, I suppose – provided you know the title and the author, you'll be able to get to the right shelf just using the catalogue."

The pause which followed was just that fraction too long.

"You do know them, don't you?" he enquired.

She twisted her body awkwardly on the sofa. "I – um – we were running late – we were meeting this dreamy BBC exec for drinks in the Circle Club – he just thrust it into my hand and I put it on the shelf and I never thought to look at it again."

"And you can't remember anything about it? Size, weight, colour -?"

She shrugged, helplessly. "It was an old one, I remember that."

I heard him inhale. At that moment Tim's phone beeped; text message, clearly. From my position of concealment I could see him glance down at it, pause, and then drop the phone back into his pocket, the message unanswered. He got to his feet, walked across to the table, and picked up her handbag..

"Anyway, there's no point in putting your friend at risk an instant longer than you need. Better make that phone call." Either the strain was beginning to tell, or there had been something extraordinarily upsetting in the text he had just received. At any rate, his voice was not quite as even as it had been.

She fumbled with the clasp on the bag,. then clapped her hand to her mouth in sudden panic.

“The cellphone! He told me never to call him on the cell, the Government listening posts monitor the networks. He wouldn't even let me save the number into my phone. I had to write it down.”

“Well, have you got your address book with you?” Tim snapped. Definitely a man whose patience was close to breaking point. Not an unfamiliar response in people confronted with our blogger doing her "ditzy-yet-cute-girl-from-La-La-land" act, but more than a little unwarranted in these precise circumstances. My fur started to fluff up.

“I keep it in my purse. It helps me feel connected to people. Now, where did I store his name? D, d...Got it.”

I heard the flick of pages being turned, and the sound of Tim's feet crossing behind the sofa.

"John's phone's over here. No, don't move. I'll bring it round to you.”

---

Rain. Manchester rain. Manchester. The city whose prosperity came from its humidity. The Merc's windscreen wipers slicking back and forth, hypnotic, mesmerising. The dark, tree-hung expanse of the Southern Cemetery to his left, deserted but for the sleeping dead.

The lucky, lucky, dead.

The dull, sodden, oddly nauseating sound of that bronze ornament impacting on a human skull. Had he killed her? Ragged, harsh, gasping breaths when he left her. Left in the recovery position, in case she vomited before John got back.

John. Army doctor, familiar with contusions, concussions, violence.

John, a lone good man in a desert of cold, soulless, ambitious wraiths. (Brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord – Mycroft Holmes - better off dead. The lucky, lucky dead.). A good man to have as a cousin, even if only for an evening.

John would save him from being a killer if anyone could. Saving people. John's job description. Not his. Damning people, more like. Including himself. From here to eternity, baa, baa, baa.

Not a killer, not yet, not necessarily (concussion, bleeding in the brain, depressed fracture of the skull. Thirty minutes walk – make that forty – from the Parrs Wood Tesco to the north side of Lapwing Lane, hard by the Christie Hospital. No A&E at the Christie, of course. How long did brain damage take to kill someone? Still a chance).

Not a killer, not intentionally. Like Sukey, though she, too hadn't meant anything, hadn't intended to kill (manslaughter, runs in families? Like incest. Not that he and Sukey – except that one time and, even then, nothing had happened, not really. Things like that don't happen to people like us. Manslaughter and treason. What would Amelia say to that?)

Lights coming up. Red for danger - traffic cameras on the lights – no reason for anyone to be tracking the Merc, not yet, not until John got back and raised the alarm. Except, that phone call from Sackville Street? Everyone on high alert already. Yes, maybe. Still, analysis takes time, synthesis even longer. Should be OK for a bit.

Better be careful at the lights, anyway. God knows how much he'd had to drink, earlier. He held it well, always had, but still, well over the limit, anyway. Drive carefully, discreetly, sensibly. Like his life, really, and just as much of an act. No sense in giving a copper an excuse to pull you over. Another excuse. Official Secrets, treason, assault, drunk driving – doing time till next century.

Time. Never enough time. How long to search an entire library? (The right library? Yes, must be. No-one working on infiltration of the trade union movement by MI5 faffs about with the John Rylands. The WCML or nothing.)

Perhaps it was just as well the academic had had been out; no car in his drive; most likely away for the weekend. Would Tim really have summoned up the nerve to torture him to extract the precise location of the memory stick? Perhaps, for Sukey. "NOTHING AT THE FLAT. THINK OF SOMETHING FAST OR YOU WON'T SEE YOUR SISTER FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS." Thank God the man had been out, making the question moot. One less crime on the list. No point searching the place, she'd made it clear there would have been nothing to find.

Nothing for it but the library.

Why couldn't that half-witted bimbo have remembered the name of the book? Half-witted? Fewer than that, now. Brain damage – concussion – bleeding in the brain.

Christ - let John get back to her in time. Only that. That and Sukey. Other than that, better off dead.

The lucky, lucky dead.

Comments

[canaan]

Aw, but I *liked* Tim.

[caulkhead]

So did we!