Leaving the mortuary and the hospital grounds, Sherlock took the shortest route back to where he knew the river was to be found. He located a bench looking over an attractive spot and settled down, getting his notebook out to check the dates of the thefts. Perhaps it was the talk he’d had with Charles Dodgson about mathematic sequences of numbers, but he knew there was a pattern in this one, if only he could see it. He sat there for a long time, while the sun gradually went down and the shadows of the trees on the other side of the river lengthened across its rippling surface. At one point he became aware that Matty was sitting patiently beside him, but he didn’t remember noticing that his friend had even arrived.
Eventually he looked up. His mouth was dry and tasted funny, and he had a slight headache, but he thought he had it.
‘There is no pattern,’ he said to Matty – the first words he had spoken for several hours. ‘That’s the pattern.’
‘What does that mean?’ Matty asked.
‘Things have been going missing from the local mortuary – parts of bodies. My new tutor, Charles Dodgson, is a potential suspect, and so is one of the students I’m rooming with – Paul Chippenham. You remember, we saw him being taken away yesterday by the police for questioning. I’ve talked to the pathologist, and I’ve got a list of the dates when the body parts went missing. I thought I could find a pattern, so I could predict when the next theft will occur, but I can’t.’
‘So that’s it then? You need to find another line of investigation.’
Sherlock shook his head. ‘No – the lack of a pattern is actually a pattern. The thief, whoever it is, has deliberately avoided a theft on the same day of the month, or when the moon is in the same phase, or with the same number of days between thefts. They’ve done thefts on the same day of the week – they could hardly avoid it, because there are only seven days of the week, but they won’t do the same day on consecutive thefts. There are no Mondays together, no Tuesdays together—’
‘I get the idea.’
‘They also vary the weather conditions. There’s only one rainy Monday, only one sunny Monday, only one cloudy Monday. In their attempts to avoid setting any kind of pattern, they’ve set a different pattern.’
Matty scratched his head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Put it this way: it’s been twenty-two days since the last theft. The thief has already put a twenty-two day space between thefts, so they won’t conduct a theft tonight. Tomorrow is a possibility, according to the gaps, but not according to the weather. It’s a Thursday tomorrow and there’s bright sunshine forecast, which rules it out because the very first theft was on a sunny Thursday. If I can figure out all of the variables, I can go through the calendar and work out which days are left.’
Matty nodded slowly. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is real clever thinkin’.’ He paused. ‘Does thinkin’ actually take energy, the same way that runnin’ or carryin’ boxes does?’
Sherlock considered. ‘I’m starving now, if that means anything.’
‘Let’s go an’ get some food then. I reckon you’re goin’ to need it.’
They ate, and then went their separate ways.
It took Sherlock most of the next day to work out the cycle. He ended up having to buy a large roll of wallpaper and borrow the dining table at Mrs McCrery’s boarding house – with her permission, of course. He unrolled the wallpaper so that it covered the table, and then with a ruler and a pen he painstakingly set up a calendar for the next three months, with each day marked separately, and space marked on each day for listing the weather, the phase of the moon and all the other variables that he thought the thief was using, including whether or not they were public holidays or market days. He then painstakingly annotated the calendar as far as he could. Weather was the problem – the local newspapers only predicted it up to a few days ahead, which at least told him that the thief was not planning any further ahead than that anyway. It would have been pointless to arrange a robbery for a sunny Monday with a new moon only to find out that, on the day, it was snowing and he’d already conducted a robbery on a snowy Monday with a new moon. Sherlock would have to do what he assumed the thief was doing, and plan only a few days ahead, checking the weather and predicting it as far as he could. What he did do, however, was to cross through the days that could be ruled out because their set of characteristics had already been used. That at least told him which days the next robbery wouldn’t occur on. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the combinations had already been used up, and there weren’t that many days left when a robbery could occur.
The next one was three days away, but it depended totally on the weather.
At various times as he worked Mrs McCrery, or her scullery maid, or one of the boys who stoked fires for her, or one of the other students in the house, would pass by the doorway, glance in and either frown or smile, but there must have been something about the expression on Sherlock’s face that stopped them from coming in and questioning him. Twice a tray of tea and scones appeared on a side table, although he had no idea how they had got there.
The next two days passed with agonizing slowness. Sherlock went to one more tutorial session with Charles Dodgson, at which they went through Euclidian geometry, attempting to derive it all from first principles. Sherlock felt stretched and exhausted by the session, but also exhilarated. Dodgson, he felt, was training his mind the way that a sports coach would train an athlete’s body.
At the end of the tutorial, Dodgson suddenly said, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot – would you wish to see some photographic images of your brother? I found them just the other day, and thought you might like sight of them.’
‘That would be – fascinating,’ Sherlock said, meaning it.
Dodgson went across his room to a bureau, from which he took a cardboard box. He placed the box on a table and took the lid off. Sherlock joined him, and saw that inside the box was a pile of pieces of stiff paper. On the top piece was an image in black and white of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, sitting at a table beneath a large, overhanging plant. He was staring pensively off to one side – probably wondering what his next meal would be, Sherlock thought uncharitably. Judging by the relative thinness of his face, the length of his hair and the way his waistcoat buttons were not straining against the cotton, the picture might have been five or six years old.
Sherlock smiled, despite himself. This was like a window on to the past. This was his brother – not an artist’s interpretation, prettied up to please the subject, but the way Mycroft had actually been on a particular day at a particular time. Even the fact that it was just black and white didn’t worry Sherlock – Mycroft only ever dressed in black or pinstripe material, his hair was black and his face was pale, so the image looked exactly like him.
‘That,’ he said softly, ‘is quite amazing.’
‘He is looking at a plate of biscuits,’ Dodgson said. ‘I told him that he had to sit there for fifteen minutes without moving while I took the portrait. In fact the process only took eight minutes, but I was so enjoying seeing him pining for the biscuits that I just left him there to suffer.’ He pulled the paper image out and placed it to one side. Beneath it was another image. This one had been taken outside, in a garden. It showed Mycroft standing with a group of other people – a large man with broad shoulders and a bowler hat, a pretty woman in a frilled dress, a boy who looked to have been about nine years old, and an older man with white hair brushed straight back off his forehead.
‘This is your brother again, with some friends,’ Dodgson said. ‘I forget now who they were.’
‘Mycroft had friends?’ Sherlock said, amazed.
‘Yes,’ Dodgson replied quietly. ‘I was one of them.’
Sherlock left Dodgson’s rooms still amazed by this newfangled process of photography, and fascinated by what effects it might have on society.
He read the local newspaper every day, hoping desperately that there would be no reports of any more robberies at the mortuary. If there were, it meant that his entire theory was wrong. He also kept his ears open as he was going around the town, but nobody mentioned anything to do with robberies. Lots of discussion of other matters of interest, but nothing about bizarre or macabre thefts.
On the morning of the third day, Sherlock awoke and glanced immediately out of the window. It was cloudy, which was what he wanted, but it didn’t look like rain, which was also what he wanted. So far, so good.
He went through the day in an agony of expectation. Eventually, as night was approaching, he met up with Matty just outside the hospital gates. Matty was wearing dark clothes as instructed. Sherlock himself had dressed in the darkest trousers and jacket he had. He only had white shirts, so he had a dark scarf wound around his neck and tucked inside the jacket, hiding the whiteness. He even had gloves.
‘Ready?’ Matty asked in a hushed voice.
‘As I’ll ever be. I hope I’m right.’
‘You’re right,’ Matty said. ‘You always are.’ He glanced around. ‘So what’s the plan. If we see somethin’, do we interfere, or do we run off an’ call the peelers?’
‘Neither of those things,’ Sherlock said firmly. ‘If we see anything, then we just observe from a distance, and follow. I want to know where the thief goes and what he does with these body parts. If he’s arrested here, then he might clam up and I’ll never know.’
‘So this is basically a huge exercise to satisfy your curiosity then.’
Sherlock considered for a moment. ‘I suppose it is,’ he admitted. ‘Do you think I ought to call the police?’
Matty shrugged. ‘I dunno. I’m just followin’ you.’
The gates to the hospital were locked, and there were only a few scattered gas lamps shining from inside the big building. Sherlock and Matty headed around the outside wall, which was set apart from the trees and bushes surrounding the estate by a ten-foot gap. The wall was ten feet high – and if that wasn’t difficult enough to climb under normal circumstances, the top was set with broken glass bottles to deter intruders. Sherlock assumed that the hospital had been someone’s home until it was converted, which would explain the security measures. People didn’t usually break into hospitals: they were usually more keen to get out.
Every now and then they passed a particularly old and large tree whose branches overhung the wall. Matty looked at Sherlock each time, but Sherlock shook his head. He wanted to get closer to where the mortuary was located in the grounds, and he was also looking for something special.
Up ahead, Matty seemed to be listening for something. Sherlock listened as well, but apart from the sound of night birds waking up, and the occasional screaming of a fox, there was nothing.
‘What are you listening for?’ he asked eventually.
‘Guard dogs,’ Matty said over his shoulder. ‘Can’t hear any barkin’, but I thought I might hear ’em breathin’ as they paced us along the inside of the wall.’
‘There aren’t any guard dogs.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s a hospital, not a bank. Why would there be guard dogs? And besides, there’s always the possibility that someone confused on painkilling drugs might get out of bed late one night and go wandering around outside. The last thing the hospital directors would want was for a patient to get ripped to pieces by a guard dog.’
‘All right then,’ Matty said dubiously, but he still appeared to be listening as they walked.
In the end, Sherlock found the thing he was looking for just as the sun was dipping beneath the horizon. Not too far away from where he estimated the mortuary was, there was a place where the roots of an unusually large tree had undermined the wall, buckling the bricks upward. Some of the bricks had fallen out, leaving a hole, and the roots themselves had spaces between them, washed out by rain perhaps, which would allow a person to crawl through. Based on the fact that there were clear marks of spadework, Sherlock assumed that the thief had come through this way as well.
He glanced around nervously. He had planned their expedition so that they would get to the mortuary before the thief, but that was based on an assumption that the thief would operate late at night. If he was going to conduct this theft at sunset, then he might already be there. That meant he might be watching Sherlock and Matty at that very moment.
Sherlock shivered.
‘Cold?’ Matty asked.
‘No.’
‘Cold feet?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Let’s go then.’
Matty dropped to his knees and then squirmed his way through the gap. His booted feet waved for a moment in the dark space, and then he was gone. Sherlock counted to ten, looked around again, and followed.
The short tunnel under the wall was damp and smelt of mould, earth and some animal that Sherlock assumed was either a fox or a badger. The thought triggered another one in his mind – what if Matty, crawling ahead of him, suddenly came across a badger coming the other way? Badgers were notoriously fierce, with sharp teeth and even sharper claws. Matty wouldn’t stand a chance!
Sherlock speeded up, knowing that it wouldn’t affect Matty’s speed but unable to help himself.
In the end he felt a clean breeze on his face moments before he emerged from the earth inside the hospital grounds. Matty was standing a few feet away, brushing himself off. ‘That was fun,’ he said, smiling. ‘We should do it again sometime.’
Sherlock decided not to mention badgers. Best not to worry his friend too much.
Together they sprinted across the hospital grounds, going from bush to bush, tree to tree, until the red-brick mortuary was ahead of them. Sherlock caught Matty’s shoulder, holding him back.
‘We goin’ to watch from ’ere?’ Matty hissed.
‘No. If the thief comes through the same place in the wall we did, then he’s going to come right past here. We need to move around so that we can see the approach and the building as well.
Sherlock circled the mortuary, Matty in tow, until he found a large holly bush that the two of them could lie beneath. From there they had a clear line of sight straight ahead to the door of the mortuary and left to the direction Sherlock thought the thief would come from. If the thief came from a different direction, such as behind them, then the bush would still provide cover.
The sun was gone by now, and the stars were beginning to twinkle in the sky. Faint wisps of cloud drifted across the darkness. There was, fortunately, still no sign of rain. The conditions were perfect.
And that’s where they stayed for the next three hours. Time passed slowly, like treacle trickling from a tin. Sherlock felt himself begin to doze a couple of times, and had to jerk himself awake. Once he heard Matty snoring, and nudged the boy in the ribs with his elbow to wake him up. He didn’t mind if Matty caught some sleep, but making a noise like a pig eating its swill was too much. It might alert the thief.
Sherlock had taken some scones from Mrs McCrery’s kitchen before coming out and hidden them inside his jacket. When he got hungry enough he pulled them out and passed a couple to Matty. Unfortunately he didn’t have any water. He should have got a hip flask from somewhere, he realized, and filled it up before setting off. Next time he was in this situation, he would prepare better.
After that realization, he couldn’t stop thinking about how dry his mouth was.
At some time during their vigil, a fox trotted across the lawn around the mortuary. It paused, head held high, and sniffed the air, then it moved on. Later a family of badgers – two adults and five cubs – crossed the area in a line. They didn’t react to any smells or sounds – they just kept on moving, fearless.
The moon appeared from above the trees. It was three-quarters full – just the right size for the theft to take place on that day of the week, on that day of the month, in those weather conditions.
Matty’s hand closed over Sherlock’s and squeezed. Sherlock glanced sideways to see that his friend was staring off to one side. He followed the boy’s gaze and noticed a black-clad shape moving through the bushes. Whoever it was, they were crouching down and moving slowly, checking in all directions to see if they were observed.
Sherlock felt a warm flush of triumph run through him. He had been right! He had successfully predicted the theft!
The figure emerged into the clear area around the mortuary and looked around one final time, pausing and sniffing the air a bit like the fox had done. It was a man, and he was wearing a long poacher’s coat – the kind with large pockets for hiding rabbits and grouse. He went up to the door. His body shielded what he was doing, but Sherlock thought that he was reaching into an inside pocket of his coat. The pocket seemed to be full of something – something that squirmed as the man’s hand closed on it. He brought his hand out, and both Matty and Sherlock gasped. There was a small figure, like a doll, crouched on his palm – and it moved!
‘That’s sorcery!’ Matty breathed.
‘No,’ Sherlock said, ‘that’s a monkey.’
‘I knew that,’ Matty said.
It had, to be fair, taken Sherlock a couple of seconds to recognize that the thing was a monkey. He had seen creatures like it before, at fairgrounds, at circuses and in zoos. This one was small enough to be hidden in a man’s pocket, obviously, but intelligent enough that it could be trained. As the two of them watched, the monkey’s handler whispered something in its ear. Quick as a flash it jumped from his hand to a drainpipe that ran up the side of the building to the roof. Sherlock saw it silhouetted against the sky for a moment, then it was gone.
The man looked around, checking to see if there was anyone there, and then slipped around the side of the building. Matty and Sherlock followed, keeping in the shadows and behind shrubbery as much as they could.
They found the man by the back door. He was leaning against it, listening. After a few seconds, Sherlock heard a sliding sound as the bolts were pulled open by his little companion. He pushed against the door, and it opened. Within a second the man had slipped inside and vanished into the darkness.
Sherlock considered for a few moments. Using a monkey to open the door was very clever, but Sherlock still wanted to know what was going on inside. Should the two of them wait, or should they move closer?
The decision was obvious – he had to see. He had to know.
He pulled Matty with him, out of the shelter of the holly bush and towards the mortuary. For a few moments he debated whether to go in through the back door, as the thief had done, but he decided that would be a mistake. He might meet the man as he was coming out, which would be a disaster. When they got to the wall, he gestured to Matty to stand with his back against the bricks and his hands clasped in front of him. Matty realized immediately what was going on and gave his friend a leg-up. Sherlock virtually flew on to the roof, and had to extend his hands to catch his weight as he fell forward. The air whooshed out of his lungs as he hit the stonework. He stayed still for a few moments, desperately hoping that the thief somewhere below hadn’t heard him. There was no sound; no movement. Eventually, when he thought it was safe, he moved on.
The roof was sloped, and there were several skylights in it. Sherlock quickly crawled across to one of them and looked down. Fortunately the moon had risen higher in the night sky, and its silvery light shone down through the glass and into the room. It took a few moments for Sherlock to recognize it, but it was the room where he and Lukather had talked a few days before. The room was empty.
Sherlock crawled across to the next skylight. The room below him now had two metal-topped tables, the size of beds, in its centre. They were set side by side. The edges of the tables were raised, and each one had a drain set towards one corner so that it could be washed down. Presumably this was where Lukather actually conducted his post-mortems. Again the room was empty, but there was an open door over to one side. Sherlock crawled in that direction, and found himself staring through a third skylight into a room that was empty apart from a series of large drawers set into one wall, stacked five across and four up. The drawers were large enough that there could be a body inside each one. On the outward face of each drawer there was a metal frame in which a small piece of card rested. There was writing on each card – presumably the name of the person whose body resided therein.
The man was standing in the centre of the room.
Sherlock couldn’t see his face – he was wearing a scarf wrapped around the lower half, obscuring his chin, mouth and nose. He was staring at the drawers. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. After glancing at it for a few moments, he strode across to one of the drawers and checked the writing on the card that was attached to the front. He grunted, and moved to the next drawer. Again he looked at the piece of paper in his hand, checking the details. This must have been the right one, because he reached out with his right hand and opened the drawer.
Sherlock caught his breath. This was fascinating – it hadn’t occurred to him before, but the thief was looking for particular bodies! He wasn’t just taking a part from a body at random – he was specifically targeting them! Did that mean he was specifically targeting the parts as well? And if so – why?
While Sherlock was asking himself these questions, the thief was pulling the drawer fully open. The movement took a lot of effort, even though the drawer appeared to be sliding on greased runners. Eventually the drawer was completely open. Looking down on it from above, Sherlock could see a shape beneath a white sheet – presumably the dead body.
The thief reached out a hand. For a moment, with a shiver, Sherlock thought he was going to pull the sheet completely off, but instead he just pulled it up a little, revealing the corpse’s feet. There was, Sherlock saw, a cardboard tag attached to the big toe of the left foot by a length of string. He supposed that was to make sure that the bodies didn’t get mixed up.
Something moved beside Sherlock.
He jerked away, suddenly thinking that it might be the monkey, but when he whirled his head around to look it was only Matty. He must have found his own way up.
‘What’s goin’ on?’ Matty asked.
‘Shh!’ Sherlock said. He indicated the scene below.
Down in the mortuary storage room, the thief was checking the tag on the corpse’s toe, double-checking that the name on the drawer matched and that he’d got the right one. He released the tag and reached into his pocket, taking something out and unfolding it with a click. It took Sherlock a moment to work out what it was, and then he realized – it was a knife!
The thief bent down and began to work on the corpse’s right foot – the one without a tag.
‘’E’s takin’ its big toe off!’ Matty breathed.
Indeed, that did appear to be what the thief was doing. He was working at cutting the corpse’s right big toe off. It was hard work, and Sherlock heard some swearing coming from the room below, even through the glass. Eventually, however, he succeeded, and the big toe vanished into his pocket along with the knife. He quickly threw the sheet back over the corpse, pushed the drawer shut, and left.
Sherlock scrambled back across the tiled roof to the first skylight that he had looked through, trying to make as little noise as possible. He gazed down through the blurry glass as the man below entered the autopsy room again and began to make his way towards the door to the hall. His monkey was still sitting on the metal post-mortem table, alternately grooming its fur and looking around.
Sherlock felt a sudden cramp in his leg. He’d been crouched for too long in the cold. He tried to extend it surreptitiously, but he overbalanced and fell forward. He shifted his hands wider apart to take his weight, but there must have been a splinter of wood in the frame of the skylight, and he felt it jab into his palm. Without thinking he pulled his hand away, but his weight was too far forward and he fell into the glass and wood of the skylight.
Into, and through.
The skylight broke under his weight, and he fell head first into the room below. The metal autopsy table was directly beneath it. If he hit it he would probably break something – most likely his skull. He desperately twisted his body, trying to catch the edge of the skylight with his foot. He managed to hook the toe of his boot over the wood, and his body swung like a pendulum. His head rushed towards a set of chains and racks that were hanging from the ceiling, presumably for moving bodies around and holding them up, and he grabbed for it desperately with both hands. They caught hold just as his toe slipped off the frame of the skylight. He had a confused impression of the thief in the room below glancing upward in shock, and springing backwards the way he had come. Sherlock’s body fell again, but this time swinging on the suspended racks like an acrobat on a trapeze. The metal was slippery beneath his fingers, and he lost his grip. He flew sideways, bouncing off the wall and landing on the tiled floor. His head hit the tiles and he saw a crimson galaxy of stars rotating in his field of view. He felt sick, and his hands were burning with pain.
Knowing that the thief was there, and desperate to get past him, Sherlock forced himself to his feet. His vision was blurry – he could see two thieves standing in two separate doorways – but he blinked hard until his head cleared.
The thief scowled at Sherlock. He was unshaven, with wild black hair and ears that looked as if they had been repeatedly hit by someone’s fists. A boxer maybe, Sherlock thought muzzily. A boxer with a monkey – that probably meant he was from a funfair: a keeper for the animals and a participant in the boxing rings that were a central feature of most travelling fairs. Not the kind of person who would be stealing body parts, necessarily.
‘A spy, eh?’ he snarled. ‘You workin’ for the rozzers? That ain’t goin’ to stop me – I’ll cut yer throat anyway!’
Desperately aware that he had ruined the whole plan, Sherlock held up his scratched and torn palms. ‘Sorry – I was trying to get hold of –’ he thought for a moment – ‘some morphine. I’ve got a kind of . . . need for it!’ He tried to sound as pathetic as possible. ‘Look, I’ll get out of your way. I won’t try to stop you, and I won’t come after you. I just want the morphine.’
‘Students!’ the thief growled, but as Sherlock edged one way around the metal table he went the other. He seemed to be accepting the possibility of Sherlock being a thief too, and despite his bluster he didn’t seem to want any trouble. He just wanted to get out with his stolen toe.
His monkey, however, had other ideas.
It grabbed a scalpel from a metal tray and leaped at Sherlock’s head, making a wild chittering sound. Sherlock saw the creature coming out of the corner of his eye and whirled around. He ducked just as the monkey got to him. It sailed over his head, slicing at Sherlock with the scalpel but missing.
‘Barney! You stupid critter – come ’ere!’ the thief yelled, moving fast towards the door, but the monkey wasn’t listening. It landed on the metal table and whirled around, jumping straight back at Sherlock’s chest. It grabbed hold of his shirt with its back paws and its front left paw, and jabbed the scalpel at Sherlock’s left eye. Sherlock caught its arm in his left hand. It was thin, like a twig, but hairy and incredibly powerful. He could feel the muscles writhing beneath its skin as the monkey fought to force the scalpel closer to Sherlock’s eye.
Sherlock forced his right hand between the monkey’s chest and his own and pushed. The monkey’s back paws scratched the skin of his stomach as it scrabbled to get a grip. His shirt tore, but he managed to push the animal away. With one massive effort he threw it across the room. It hit the wall, screaming in anger, and dropped out of sight. The scalpel hit the wall and clattered to the floor. Sherlock could hear the monkey’s claws clicking on the tiled floor as it moved, but he didn’t know where it was. The thief didn’t either – he was poised in the doorway, not sure whether to run or to rescue his creature.
Sherlock reached out his right hand for the metal tray where the monkey had got the scalpel. His hand was shaking from the unexpected fall and the shock of what was happening.
The monkey suddenly appeared around the edge of the metal table. Its wizened little face was contorted in rage. It grabbed hold of the table’s edge with its left hand and swung itself up on to the surface, then jumped straight for Sherlock, screaming.
Sherlock brought the metal tray smartly around like a tennis racket and batted the creature across the room, towards the thief, who grabbed it out of the air, bundled it under his coat and ran.
Sherlock just stood there, breathing heavily. A noise from above made him glance upward. Matty’s face was staring down at him.
‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.
‘I’m . . . fine,’ Sherlock said, although he didn’t feel fine at all. ‘It was just a stupid fall. Now we’ll never know where he goes!’
‘Leave it to me,’ Matty said. Before Sherlock could respond, the boy had vanished from sight. Sherlock had to stop himself from shouting after his friend. The thief had a knife, and a homicidal monkey. Matty was in incredible danger!