THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 21st CENTURY

Tony Richards

THE HOUSE OF BLOOD

He knew the man was real. But Lieutenant Vince Capaldi could scarcely believe it. That famous narrow face, framed against the background of a hotel window, with its hooked nose and its very watchful eyes.

“My God,” he breathed. “You can’t have aged a day since Victorian times.”

Holmes nodded.

“So you really are immortal?”

“I found it out after the Reichenbach Falls, when I suddenly returned to life with no sensible explanation. A definite case in point, Lieutenant …” and the great detective favoured him with a quirky half-smile“… of the last remaining solution to a puzzle, however improbable, being the correct one. I never thought that I would turn out to be the most striking example of that adage.

“And now,” he went on quickly, “what is this murder you have come to me about?”

Capaldi’s eyes widened. “I never said anything about any—”

“You have been wearing tight latex gloves recently,” Holmes pointed out. “I doubt that you would do that for a mugging. There is a smear of luminol on the edge of your left shoe – a substance for detecting blood. And the gravity of your expression speaks of no lesser a crime than murder most foul.

“In fact,” he continued before the policeman could break in, “I would hazard you have come to me about a fourth in the series of killings that began last week. I’ve naturally been following them on the TV news and in the press. And let me hazard at something else. Something you have contrived to keep from the newshounds and the general public. All the victims so far have been completely drained of their vital essence.”

The colour disappeared from the lieutenant’s features, his mouth falling open.

“Luminol, my good fellow, is used to find mere trace elements of blood. And so why would you use it around a freshly murdered human corpse except to discern if there was any blood at all?”

When he saw that he had rendered the man speechless, Holmes allowed himself another little smile.

“You’re as bad as Lestrade,” he commented. “You mean well, but you do not really think.”

Then he encouraged his visitor to bring him up to date on the whole situation.

Stammering, Capaldi tried to get his thoughts together. He went over what had happened to the first victim – a certain Harriet Ellison, of Boise, Idaho, who was still fresh in his memory. She had won a massive jackpot from a slot machine ten days ago. Been photographed with her reward, and then become surrounded by well-wishers and hangers-on with whom she had been partying. Halfway through the evening, she had headed off to the restrooms, only to mysteriously vanish. Her corpse, clad merely in its underwear, had been found in the desert on the edge of town next morning.

Lawrence Mark of Trenton, New Jersey had been the next one. And his case followed the same pattern. After a huge run of luck at the craps tables, he had disappeared, only for it to prove that he had suffered the same fate.

Daniel Besset of Oxford, Maryland, had been the third. He had recently won sixty thousand dollars by means of his skill at Texas Hold’em.

This much, Sherlock Holmes already knew.

“And the last?” he prompted.

“Just this morning. Hasn’t even made the papers yet. Kyle Monoghan from Boston.”

“And he had won at?”

“Blackjack. According to the witnesses, it was a pretty amazing run of luck.”

“Do you have a picture of the fellow?” Holmes enquired calmly.

Capaldi was aware of the detective’s reputation, and had come prepared. He took a glossy photo from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it over. Watched with quiet awe as Holmes studied the thing. It had been taken at the crime scene, Monoghan sprawled out in the desert dirt.

One of Holmes’ narrow eyebrows lifted just a touch, but that was all.

“Let me make sure that I have got this straight. Nothing whatsoever connects the victims, not in terms of gender, age, hometown, occupation or ethnicity. They were not even kidnapped from the same casino. The single thing that does connect them is that Lady Luck smiled on them beneficently shortly before they met their fate.”

“That’s right.”

“And were their winnings taken?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Every time.”

“Which would mark these cases as a simple string of murder-robberies. Except that …”

Each of the victims had been stripped practically naked. And been drained completely of their blood, by means of punctures at the throat and wrists. They’d already established that.

“My guys are calling them ‘The Vampire Killings’,” Capaldi let slip.

“There are no such creatures,” Holmes assured him. “Reports that have tried to pit me against Mr Stoker’s Transylvanian count are much exaggerated.”

Then he paused for a few moments, lost in thought.

“Very well, then. I shall take the case. But I’ll require a fee.”

“My chief has already okayed it.”

Holmes grunted approvingly before turning his attention from Capaldi to the scene beyond his window. The flashing lights, the dreamlike outlines of the different hotels, the churning throng on the sidewalks below.

“Just out of interest, Mr Holmes,” he heard Capaldi venture, “what exactly do you think of Vegas?”

“Even by the standards of modern day America …” and the great detective lowered his tone, aware that honesty required being rude, “… it is utterly preposterous.”

* * *

Holmes wove through the dense crowds on the Strip. The heat and noise seemed to lash at him like whips. He missed London. He missed his flat over Baker Street. And most of all, he missed Watson, although that final emotion was tinged, as ever, with a faint colouring of guilt. The poor old fellow had finally succumbed to a pulmonary canker. And had voluminous doses of secondary pipe-smoke been the cause of that?

Holmes was in disguise, realising his normal garb would draw too much attention to himself. He needed to blend in. And so he had on a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, canvas shoes, a beige baseball cap and a pair of chinos. It was the best compromise that he could manage. He would rather die a hundred deaths than resort to jeans or shorts.

He had come here for two reasons only. First, to see the place with his own eyes. And secondly, to visit Star Trek: the Experience. He had become a devotee of the original show and its movie spin-offs, since he felt a great affinity with the character called Mr Spock.

And he’d intended to spend two or three days here at the very most. But then the murders had begun – he had immediately suspected his assistance might be called upon. In fact, he had already been making some enquiries of his own.

Most of the people around him were tourists, here for the shows, the restaurants and bars, the dolphins and white tigers and only a little flutter on the side. They interested him not a jot. At the heart of this case lay gambling in the serious sense and the caprices of fortune; he was utterly certain of it. That commodity could be found in any place here, any time of day and night. This was a town where the game was constantly afoot.

He headed for the Paris, the setting of Kyle Monoghan’s triumph and the last place that he had been seen. There was one thing Holmes was convinced of: whoever was behind this, there were more than one of them. Harriet Ellison could have been abducted by a single individual. And Daniel Besset had been elderly and slightly built. But Monoghan and Lawrence Mark were both robust and burly. No drugs had been found in the toxicology, so there were at least two murderers involved.

He went through the lobby and into the labyrinthine depths of the casino, his attention gliding watchfully from side to side. Nothing that he saw surprised him after more than a week in this place.

Most of the visitors in here were, as out on the sidewalk, merely tourists. They were gambling, but only with a sense of merriment. These were the kind of folk who set a fifty dollar limit, or smaller, for the entire evening. The kind who gambled at all merely because they could not do the same back home.

But scattered among them were other individuals whose presence Holmes found considerably more ominous. Older women wearing gloves, so that they’d not callous their fingers with their constant tugging at the one-armed bandits. Pale, intense men hunched as though in prayer over the blackjack tables. People standing near the roulette wheels with starved-looking gleams in their dull, tired eyes. There was nothing merry about these sorts. Gambling fever had them in its grip as tightly – nay, savagely – as any opiate. They had become slaves to the habit.

And poorly treated slaves as well. Mostly, they were cheaply dressed. There was evidence that they had pawned watches and rings in some cases – all it needed was a swift glance at their lower finger joints and wrists. But it was their expressions that struck most at the great detective. Hope would flare up as the card was dealt,  the wheel set spinning. But it would give way, almost invariably, to horrible disappointment, made all the more profound by the fact that it was a familiar sensation.

He headed for the bar area, glad to leave the poor wretches behind. It was not a busy hour of the day, and there was just one man working behind the counter.

“What’s your poison, buddy?”

Holmes ordered a pina colada, for which he had acquired a taste.

“That unfortunate fellow they found this morning. He was in here yesterday, wasn’t he?”

“You bet,” the barman frowned. “Had an incredible run at the tables.”

“Did he celebrate here afterwards?”

“Where else would he go?”

“And he attracted a big crowd?”

The barman grinned sardonically. “Pal, when you’re on a winning streak in Vegas, hell, you’ve always got a load of friends. The dames especially … that is, till your luck runs out.”

“Does anyone in particular linger in your memory?”

The man thought about it. “There was this chick dressed in black. Chinese or Japanese or something. She didn’t kind of pounce on the guy. She just moved in on him slowly, till finally she had her arm around him.”

Holmes felt his pulse quicken. In all the enquiries he had made so far, there had been mention of an Oriental woman.

“And did Monoghan leave with her?”

“Friend, I was too busy mixing drinks to even know.”

Holmes thanked him and then headed back towards the gaming area. He already had a plan. In fact, he’d come to see that what he needed to attract these villains was a winner. Someone on a lucky streak. That was the kind of person who they targeted.

There was nobody he could make out who answered that description at the moment. And so he would have to engineer it.

It would be childishly simple to join one of the high stakes blackjack games and start to win a fortune by the trick of counting cards. But establishments like this one were accustomed to such practices – the security goons would descend on him before the killers could. And so Holmes turned to the roulette area instead.

The first three wheels that he looked at were functioning perfectly. But the fourth? There appeared to be some very slight wear to the bearings. Patterns – too small for a lesser intellect to notice – were being repeated in the places that the ball fell. Holmes stood back for fifteen minutes, taking mental notes. Until finally, he felt confident a goodly amount of lucre could be made here.

By which time, he had decided that he ought not be the actual beneficiary. When these murderous fiends arrived, it would be better to observe them from a slight remove at first. Once they’d shown their true intentions, he would apprehend them. He had his trusty revolver snuggled underneath his shirt.

In which case, who should be the lucky man? Holmes’ gaze was immediately drawn to a short, middle-aged gentleman at the far end of the table. They were similarly dressed, except the fellow wore no cap. But that was where the resemblance ended. This hapless soul was overweight, with thinning red hair, and his pores practically oozed frustration. He had been doing badly at the wheel the whole time the detective had been standing there. He was, in fact, down to his last few chips.

Holmes wandered over to his elbow.

“Things have to look up some time,” he murmured, apropos of nothing.

The fellow glanced around at him surprisedly.

“You really think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That accent? You a Limey?”

A fevered gleam had appeared in his eyes. And Holmes understood immediately what was happening.

People who were addicted to gambling all had one peculiar quirk. They took anything different in the environment about them, anything unexpected or new, as an omen that their luck was due to change. And this individual seemed to be in that exact state of mind. He perceived the presence of an Englishman beside him as some kind of talisman.

“Fred Bonner,” the man announced, grasping Holmes firmly by the hand.

“George Smith.”

“Pleased to meet you, George. You stand right there and tell me which number I ought to put these chips on.”

Holmes gazed at the wheel.

“You should try number 12.”

And when 12 came up, Fred crowed.

Over the course of the next half hour, he won repeatedly. Not with every single turn, naturally. There were too many variables for even Holmes to foresee every bounce and clatter of the little silver ball. But enough times that the pile of chips in front of the man grew impressively large. And, predictably, a crowd began to gather.

Holmes kept his head tucked slightly down and his eyes hooded, pretending to be absorbed in the game when he was actually not. Most of the folk around him appeared to be ordinary – a couple were streetwalkers, and one chap near the back was almost certainly a pickpocket. But the great detective had no time for such trivia on this occasion. When would the killers turn up?

An Oriental woman’s face appeared in the throng across from him. He had to struggle not to look straight at her.

She was slender, very beautiful. It was hard to be certain with those who heralded from the East, but she was probably in her early thirties. Her hair was tied back in a bun. Her irises were jet black.

The woman was clad in some kind of silken trouser suit. The blouse had a high, stiff collar. Holmes’ suspicions were immediately aroused. Why would anyone wear something so constricting in the kind of heat that reigned outside this gaming palace?

There’d be time to find the answer to that later. Urgency pressed at his heart. He had successfully dangled his bait. Now, it was time to let the villain try and take it.

“Whad’ya think?” Fred was asking him, “… 12 again?”

“I really think you ought to quit.”

“You serious? I’m on a roll!”

“And all rolls come to an end. Cash your winnings, Mr Bonner.”

Holmes became afraid that he would not succeed in stopping this. The gleam in his new friend’s eyes sharpened, the fellow’s expression growing angry. He was in the grip of his addiction more firmly than he had ever been. Left to his own devices, he would stay at the wheel, frittering away every penny he had won.

But, years back, Holmes had spent a fortnight at a temple deep in the Laotian jungle, and had learnt some techniques from the monks there. He met Fred’s gaze and kept his voice low, employing a mild form of hypnosis.

“That’s me done. Drinks for everyone,” he whispered to the man.

“That’s me done! Drinks for everyone!” Fred bellowed, to the cheers and applause of the crowd.

Holmes allowed a distance of several yards to grow between himself and Fred as they headed for the bar. He was still an observer to this milieu, and would only become an active participant once that he was certain that he had his felons. Drinks were mixed and passed around. The great detective found himself engaged in conversation with a claims adjuster from Birmingham, Alabama, but kept most of his attention fixed on what was going on around him.

The barkeeper had been absolutely right. The Oriental woman did not close in immediately on her target. Rather, she hung about the edges of the man’s personal space, casting sideways glances in his direction. There seemed to be some large item of jewellery underneath her black blouse; Holmes could see the bulge it made. Why did she not have it on display, like all the other women present?

And one time, when she dipped her head, her collar shifted and Holmes thought he caught a glimpse of a scar. He had no idea what that signified.

It was too much of a coincidence that she had happened to be in the Paris at the same time Fred began his winning streak, which told Holmes that his notion about multiple miscreants had been absolutely right. There had to be eyes everywhere, spies in most of the casinos, looking out for situations such as this. In which case, how large a criminal conspiracy was this? But the detective could make out nobody who might be a confederate.

The Oriental woman reached across and lightly touched Fred’s arm. Holmes excused himself politely, wandering away to a spot in the bar where he could continue to observe without himself being noticed.

The woman engaged Fred in conversation. Holmes could see immediately that she had the talents of a clever, subtle courtesan. She made a little joke, at which Fred smiled. And then, when he made one himself, she burst into uproarious laughter, pretending she needed to hold onto his forearm to support herself.

Her hand had moved to his shoulder a minute after that. And a while later, she was no longer addressing Fred’s face, but murmuring in his ear.

Holmes saw him nod.

The curious thing was, the man had been forgotten by the others by this time. He had been the centre of attention when he had been winning. But the fickle interest of this crowd had already moved on to other subjects. He had become all but invisible. That was how the victims had been spirited away from such busy venues. The mental inexactness of the common herd, its ability to be distracted so easily, never ceased to amaze Holmes, or appal him.

Fred and the woman started ambling towards the exit. The detective followed, taking great care not to close the gap.

Which turned out to be one of the worst mistakes that he had ever made. Just as the couple reached the Strip, some coaches out front began disgorging their passengers. They were elderly to the last. And the sidewalk became immediately snarled up with arthritic doddering and Zimmer frames. Trying to get past without bowling over some frail octogenarian became an almost impossible challenge. Holmes watched desperately as the two figures dwindled away from him. And, as soon as he found a passage through, he ran in their direction.

He was just in time to see the couple reach a corner and a van pull up. The rear doors were flung open. And – as though on some invisible cue – a group of people, maybe eight of them, detached themselves from the passers-by and surrounded Bonner, shielding him from view.

He was bundled into the van. The others followed him inside. The doors slammed shut. The Oriental woman climbed in by the driver, shouting something. And the vehicle roared away.

Holmes, who had his revolver half-drawn, watched it disappear. The only thing he could do now was call Lieutenant Capaldi and instigate a search.

Except he had still not got used to the maintenance of mobile phones, and the battery in his was flat.

* * *

“It’s my fault,” he was murmuring at dawn the next morning. “Poor, poor Fred.”

The desert sprawled around them, the temperature of its air already rising. Fred Bonner was lying in his boxers near the foot of a massive saguaro cactus, his skin so robbed of colour that it might be alabaster.

“No use blaming yourself,” said Vince Capaldi. “Wasn’t you that killed him.”

“Wasn’t it?” the great detective barked back angrily. “I should never have used an unwitting man as an instrument of such deception. No, I should have played the role myself!”

“In which case, you’d be lying here, and we’d be no closer to solving this. You say, apart from the Oriental woman, all the rest were ordinary-looking?”

That was not exactly what he’d said. Holmes recalled his brief glimpse of the people who’d abducted Bonner. There’d been nothing outstanding about them, certainly. But they all shared a quality that he had previously perceived in the casino.

They’d been cheaply dressed, their faces drawn. Their brows had been furrowed, their eyes squinting, like they were unaccustomed to the natural outdoor light. Some of them had been sporting pale bands of skin at their wrists where watches had once snuggled. They were, in short, the same kind of gambling addicts Holmes had mentally remarked on in the Paris.

Guilt gnawed at him on the ride back into town. Did Bonner have a family? He did not even know. But finally, a fresh sense of resolve gripped the detective. This terrible death would not be in vain. He would solve the case for Fred’s sake!

Capaldi dropped him off at his hotel. And Holmes, as soon as he was in his room, pulled on a new disguise. An old shirt, which he rumpled up before slipping into. A pair of grey nylon trousers and some old brown shoes. He took his wristwatch off and put it in a drawer. And mussed his hair up in the mirror before taking a wad of cash from the safe and going out.

At the Luxor, he converted the entire sum into chips. Then he went across to the blackjack tables and sat down. And deliberately proceeded to lose every single hand over the next two hours.

Were there eyes on him? He thought yes. Holmes could feel his neck prickling as the cards were dealt, but did not look around.

When practically all his chips were gone, he stood up with a defeated sigh, wandered over to the bar area and ordered a straight scotch.

He was careful to sit round-shouldered, and feigned a melancholy air. A shabby, grey-haired woman eased herself onto the barstool next to his.

“Down on your luck, huh?”

Her tones revealed her as a Brooklynite. Holmes affected not merely an American accent but a convincing Deep South drawl when he answered her.

“Ma savings are all gone. Ma daughter’s college fund. Cain’t even afford a ticket home. What in the Lord’s name am I gonna do?”

A look of understanding filled the woman’s red-rimmed eyes.

“Try this place.”

She handed him a card. It read ‘The House of Good Fortune’ and gave an address, but nothing more.

Holmes frowned. “A-nother casino?”

“Nah, not a gaming house. A house of worship.”

He squinted at her. “How’s that gonna help?”

“If you join in …” and the woman’s lips pursed deviously, “… it might just change your luck a little. Don’t take my word for it, son. Come and see for yourself. Directly after sundown, tonight.”

She was gone from the stool the next instant, with a nimbleness that belied her age.

Holmes was left with hours to kill. Ought he call in the police? But if, as he had already decided, this city was laced with underground informants, then the sudden emergence of conventional law officers might give the game away. Forewarned, the perpetrators might escape. No, he had got this far by himself. So he would have to carry it the rest of the way.

Holmes trudged along the Strip for a while, the bizarre sights around him melting to a tepid blur, the urgent sounds reduced to a static-like hissing in his ears. This was precisely one of those occasions when a three percent solution of cocaine would give his mind the few hours of respite it needed. But the laws had changed. And his conscience would not let him break them while he was still taking the LVPD’s shilling.

He finally wound up back in his room, sprawled out on the bed, watching old reruns of Star Trek.

“It goes beyond the bounds of logic, Jim.”

That was so beautifully succinct it almost made a tear well up.

* * *

Sleep practically overtook him, and he emerged from it with a jerk. Through his hotel window, he could see the sky had darkened. The coloured lighting on the street below glowed with a lurid brilliance.

The entire town was being swallowed up in shadow. Holmes felt his heartbeat speeding up again. He was close to getting to the bottom of this whole affair – of that, he was certain. The same frisson which had to overcome a hunter had him in its clutches.

But he reminded himself that adrenalin was also a drug, just as potent and confounding as the gambling addiction he had seen so often in this city. So he forced himself to slow down and think clearly. He was just one man, and headed into possible grave danger. How many congregants might be gathered at this ‘house of worship’? His gaze drifted towards his trusty revolver, which was on the nightstand.

Then it turned away, because he might need more than just five shots. In his time here in America, Holmes had purchased several brand new items of equipment. So he vaulted off the bed to where his bags were stored.

The blazes with his trusty revolver – where the devil were his trusty Glocks?

* * *

Holmes re-studied the small card that he’d been given on the way out. ‘House of Good Fortune’. The name described nothing, and was perfectly anonymous in its own way. In a city of this kind, it could be a small casino or a Chinese restaurant. It was in this manner that the people he was on the search for stayed below the radar.

By this time, he was quite convinced that he was dealing with a cult. He had encountered them before. They were more dangerous than any purely criminal organisation, since their members were fanatical and hell-bent on their goals.

A hot breeze skirled on the evening air around him. Holmes was dressed as he had been earlier, but had put on a light raincoat. Not that he expected rain, but the garment served to cover up the pair of sidearms, which both had extended clips.

The address he was headed to was several blocks behind the old part of the Strip. The clientele at these casinos were more hardy than their uptown counterparts. There were vagrants in evidence, even on the main drag. And the avenues further back had a dangerous reputation. But Holmes had known streets of this kind in Victorian London, and he pressed on, undeterred.

He came, finally, to the building in question. And his brow creased with mild shock. It was derelict, as he had already supposed. But he had not expected to find any place of worship in a closed-down porno theatre.

So far as he could make out, there was nobody guarding the exterior of the place. The front doorways were covered up with rusty corrugated iron. Holmes noticed immediately that one of the sheets was badly bent. He went over to it. Sure enough, it pulled back easily, sufficient to allow him through.

He went cautiously into the bowels of the theatre. The lobby was empty and perfectly dark, its air stagnant with the odour of decay. But from the double doors that led into the cinema, he could hear low chanting. There were chinks of coloured light.

Feigning the manner of a man lost and bewildered, he ventured through … to be confronted by a very deeply curious sight.

Up at the front of the auditorium, fires were blazing in large earthenware pots. The flames being cast out were not yellow. They were a startling crimson, giving the whole place a haematic aspect. The smoke from them rolled towards the ceiling, forming a miasma which let out a sickly stench.

There were perhaps a hundred congregants in here, far more than Holmes had expected. They were stood between the rows of rotting seats, and did not even notice him enter. All were of the same kind he had remarked on earlier – blighted, shabby souls enthralled by the failed promise of the gaming tables. Men and women, young and old. Holmes went gently down the aisle, and found a place beside the same grey-haired woman who’d invited him this afternoon.

She realised he’d arrived. Greeted him with a tight smile and a brief nod. And then returned her attention to the front of the theatre, and did not look away again.

None of these folk did. The Oriental woman had their complete attention.

She was standing at the centre of the open space out front, shaking a pair of large, crude rattles. Her face was tipped forwards and her eyes were closed. And she was yelling out some kind of chant, a fevered caterwauling in a language that Holmes did not recognise.

To one side of her was some kind of altar, hewn from a large block of stone. How it had been brought in here was anyone’s guess. On top of it was ranked a row of goblets of some dully-gleaming metal. It sickened one to think what those were used for.

The woman was dressed in the same manner he had seen her last time. Except that now, the collar of the blouse had been fully unbuttoned. Her neck and throat and the top portion of her breastbone were revealed.

Holmes squinted in the sickly light. Was it just a trick of shadow, or were those narrow scars on the side of her neck, cut in deliberate patterns?

Despite his parlous circumstances, Holmes allowed himself a knowing smile. He was beginning to comprehend this.

And then it faded away completely. From the darkened theatre wings, a gurney was wheeled out by four assistants.

The man strapped to it was perfectly healthy. All that he had suffered so far was the indignity of being stripped down to his underwear. His mouth was gagged. He was struggling mightily, but to no avail. And he might have been a taller, rather more muscular version of Fred Bonner.

This was without any shade of a doubt somebody else who had done well at some game of chance. It struck Holmes how badly all these congregants would like the opportunity to do the same.

But what was taking place here? How could capturing and killing such a man achieve …?

The woman’s chanting stopped.

She laid the rattles to one side, then stooped over her victim, grinning hideously. Save for the crackling of the flames, the room had fallen silent.

“Be still now. You have what we want,” Holmes thought he heard her mutter.

And she had to have some kind of mastery of hypnosis herself. Either that, or what she had said served to freeze the unfortunate man with incomprehension and terror. Because he became completely motionless, his widened eyeballs following her when she moved away.

She stepped over to the altar, picked up one of the goblets and something else that Holmes could not make out, then returned to her prey. Set the cup beside him on the gurney, and then turned her attention to the fellow’s wrist. He gave a muffled gasp of pain. Holmes finally realised what she had been carrying in her other hand. A thick, crude needle with a length of rubber tubing running from it.

She had pierced one of the man’s veins. The tube was dangled into the goblet. Blood began to fill it. It looked black in this strange light.

Holmes knew the time for action was almost at hand, but his limbs felt very stiff. His mind was whirring. He ought to have been expecting something like this after all the evidence he’d been presented with – he knew that. But what this woman and her followers hoped to gain by actions of this nature was impossible to fathom.

Next moment, though, he got an awful demonstration of it. The woman suddenly pinched off the tube, stopping the flow of gore. She picked up the goblet with both hands, raised it into the air in some form of supplication.

And then – to the detective’s horror – put it to her lips. And drank.

Even worse was to follow. Because the cup was passed on to the assistants who’d wheeled the man out. They each took a sip. And then the goblet was handed over to the people standing in the rows of seats, who began to follow suit.

It was as repulsive a sight as Holmes had ever witnessed. Behaviour so degraded it was barely human. Were these the depths to which this miserable rabble had been reduced? Did they genuinely believe that if they drank the fluids of a victor at the tables they would become winners too?

It defied credulity. But equally, it made no sense.

They might try this one time, out of utter desperation. But it surely would make not the slightest difference to their fortunes. Except that the grey-haired woman beside him was obviously a regular here. So were many others – it was beyond question. And what on earth made them keep coming back?

It was of no real importance, he decided. There was no accounting for the demented behaviour to which addicts stooped. The Oriental woman was preparing to drain her victim a second time. Holmes knew he had to put a stop to this.

He stepped back out into the aisle, drawing both his weapons. He aimed one at the crowd, and the other at the black-clad figure.

And then shouted, in his sternest voice, “You are not Oriental, are you, madam?”

All movement stopped. Every eye turned towards him. Only the flickering red light of the flames continued as it had before.

“Every description I’ve heard of you gives your origin as the Far East. But that is not the case. On closer inspection, you are a Native American. By the ritualistic scarring on your neck, a shaman. And by your very behaviour, not a benign sort, no. A practitioner of the dark arts!”

The woman’s face screwed up with fury. And she jabbed a pointed fingernail at him.

“Get him!” she screamed to the others. “Rip the unbeliever limb from limb!”

Some of those nearest him began to shuffle forward. But it was hardly a determined effort. These were people in the throes of a devouring mental sickness, after all. Two swift shots above their heads, and they drew back.

The detective allowed a smile to tug the edges of his lips, swinging his attention back towards the gurney.

“I would not rely on ravaged souls like these to fetch my morning paper, much less save my hide. If this is your best defence, madam, then Death Row awaits you.”

The witch woman, however, seemed uncowed.

“You think that you are very clever, yes? You think you have this all worked out?”

A touch of recognition sprang into her dark eyes, her head tipping slightly to one side.

“I know who you are. That so-smart Englishman, who relies on logic and who laughs at death.” Her own lips curled, more fiercely than his. “Well laugh at this! Where is your logic now?”

She pointed again, but this time above her. Suspecting some kind of trick, Holmes refused to raise his head at first. But then he realised the quality of light in the whole room was changing. And, from the direction of the ceiling, he could hear some kind of rumbling noise.

When his gaze lifted towards it, he was rendered utterly numb. His heart seemed to freeze up in his chest. His limbs became like marble. He could scarcely breathe. He had lived by deduction and science his whole life. And so … how could this be?

The heavy smoke had formed a loosely rolling ball over the altar. And as Holmes watched, it began to change shape. A massive face appeared within its contours. It had pointed ears. Its mouth had fangs. And its eyes – each as large as a man’s fist – had slitted pupils and were glowing a baleful shade of carmine. Its expression was a twisted one, of absolute malevolence.

At first, Holmes’ mind simply could not accept it. His thoughts darted around like some agitated hive of insects. He was trying to explain this in a logical, sane fashion, and could not. This was not some trick of the light. Nor could he make out any hint of a special gadget or projector.

He had to accept it, finally. At least it explained why the congregants kept coming back.

“An evil spirit,” he concluded out loud, “called in these parts, so I believe, a Manitou. I should imagine it has wandered into Vegas from the bleak surrounding desert, finding new believers here, and sustenance.”

He hated being forced to descend to this level of intellect, but had little choice. His eyesight was not lying to him. The true solution to this case was paranormal, not material. The creature had set up home in this abandoned building. The woman was either its servant or familiar. The congregants gathered here, there was a sacrifice, and human blood was drunk. And – by means of their Master’s otherworldly influence – these people would return to the casinos and finally win at the tables. Not an awful lot, Holmes supposed, or else they’d leave this city. Just enough to keep them solvent. Just enough to keep them hooked on this abominable practice.

Their needs were being partially fulfilled. And so were the monster’s. It had an audience of supplicants by now. And there were fear and pain and blood and dying, which had to be like meat and drink to the foul thing.

All of this the great detective realised in a flash. But there was no triumph accompanying the knowledge. Rather, it filled him with a terrible dread.

The witch woman was grinning at him openly.

“Those are pretty impressive guns you’ve got there. But they do not impress him. Go on, try! He laughs at bullets!”

He was being mocked – Holmes knew it. But common sense told him that he at least ought to try. He pointed both Glocks at the creature, and let loose a fusillade of shots.

The rounds passed through, doing no damage. And the thing began to grow larger, swelling against the background of the mildewed ceiling.

“You’ve had your chance!” the woman was chuckling. “Now, it’s his turn to strike back!”

Holmes did not know what she meant at first. But then he saw that it was not merely the head expanding. A neck and shoulders appeared. And then muscular arms, ending in broad hands tipped with savage claws.

In another few seconds, this monstrous entity would reach down and shred him like a sheet of tissue paper. And it would not be a normal physical assault. Could he survive it?

Holmes wavered, uncertain what to do. He knew no spells. He had no knowledge of the magic arts. So how could he defeat this beast?

There was a humming noise as the air parted. The Manitou had lashed out. Holmes was forced to jump away, and just in time. If he’d still been standing on the spot, he would have been ripped in two.

The beast continued growing. At this rate, it would become so large there would be no escaping it.

Desperately, Holmes glanced back at the woman. She was braying with laughter, quite unable to control herself. The insistent pressure on her lungs had doubled her forward; she was clutching at her belly. Then he noticed something else.

At the Paris casino yesterday, he had believed there was some item of jewellery hidden underneath her blouse. Now it had fallen clear, and he could see it. It was a pendant, a large, tulip-shaped gemstone on a silver chain and setting.

The translucent stone was the exact same colour as the Manitou’s eyes, and had the same unearthly lustre. Were they somehow linked?

If he discharged a weapon at it, though, he’d kill the woman too. Even under such dire circumstances, he rebelled at the idea of shooting a member of the fairer sex.

The creature took another swipe at him. Again, he narrowly avoided it. Half a row of seating was disintegrated by the blow. Holmes stumbled back.

But then, he noticed a change came across the witch woman that altered his original frame of mind. The beast’s swelling shadow had spread across her. And in that vile penumbra, the true nature of her appearance was revealed.

All beauty fled, her face becoming leathery and wizened. Her eyes were sunken deep. Her open lips framed desolate gums, only a few rotted stumps of teeth remaining. Her body was hunched over, and her fingers horribly gnarled.

She had to be hundreds of years old, a filthy hag, and had only kept herself alive by means of her dark conjurations. Holmes felt his resolve return. There was no further time to waste. His arm straightened. He took his shot.

His aim was true. The woman was struck instantaneously dead, crashing to the floor.

And the pendant burst into a thousand gleaming carmine shards.

The effect was immediate. An obscene wailing, followed by a sucking noise, made Holmes look back up. The Manitou was shrinking, disappearing, being siphoned away, almost certainly, into some other plane of existence in which only spirits dwelt.

As for the congregants, they took in what was happening and then – true to their debased natures – turned tail and fled, leaving the room by any exit they could find, in the same manner as a swarm of rats confronted in their nest.

It was over, thank God. Holmes used the sleeve of his raincoat to wipe perspiration from his brow. He remained where he was for half a minute, letting his breathing steady. And then he hurried down to help the kidnapped man.

* * *

A couple of hours later, Holmes and Capaldi found themselves sitting on the front stoop of the theatre. There was continuing activity around them, since the forensics boffins were still processing the scene. Two slim, attractive women, one auburn-haired, the other dark and slightly shorter, went past them into the building.

“We’ll get the others. They’ll be charged with being accessories,” the lieutenant assured him.

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

“Witch women?” Capaldi grunted. “Evil spirits? Man, that has to top even Moriarty.”

But Holmes just became stiff-lipped. “Believe me, Lieutenant. Nothing, however inhuman or vile, ever quite manages that.”

“But he’s long gone, ain’t he?” the policeman smiled. And he was freshly surprised when Holmes responded with a brisk shake of his narrow head.

“Proposition one: I am immortal. Proposition two: Moriarty is my constant and unflinching Nemesis, as I am his. It therefore stands to reason that if I am still alive, then so …”

He let the final pair of syllables die unspoken on the hot night air. The two men gazed across the rooftops at the purple sky, a depthless silence falling over them.

Which was finally broken when Capaldi asked, “Any idea where he might be?”

“Not a clue,” Holmes muttered.

THE DESERT KING

The big white SUV with sheriff’s department markings down its sides went roaring out past Phoenix city limits, powered down the freeway for a good long distance and then left the blacktop altogether and continued on.

Holmes jerked with alarm as everything around him began lurching violently and creaking.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

The driver of the vehicle, Sheriff Harlan Moore, let out a loud bark of a laugh, then smacked his lips, still grinning.

“Lived in these parts my whole lifetime, Mr Holmes, sir. I could find my way along an ant-trail in the dark.”

Holmes certainly hoped so. The horizon out in front of him was swaying so aggressively they might as well have been on board a ship during a mighty storm. But what a horizon it was!

This was the Sonoran Desert, the lowest situated and so the greenest one in the whole world. There were no sand dunes and no salt flats here. The terrain in front of him was very heavily vegetated, except that this was plant-life of the hardiest kind. There were great masses of thorny scrub, most of it decorated with bright little flowers. There were the sturdy barrel shapes of cacti too, similarly adorned. And most impressively, there were the enormous saguaro cacti, the ‘sentinels of the desert’, some of them standing over twenty feet tall. Holmes had known of them for a long time, since they had featured on the covers of the penny dreadful ‘cowboy stories’, back in his own day. But to see them in real life? He had to admit it was a most impressive spectacle.

The sun beat down mercilessly on everything that he was looking at. It hung above them like the opening to a furnace. Nothing much was moving in this heat, Holmes noticed. A pair of doves flapped suddenly up in front of their vehicle and circled away, but that was all.

“And how long has this ‘commune’ been here?” he asked.

“Practically a year.”

“But surely, this is protected land?”

“It’s called the Sonoran Desert National Monument,” Harlan Moore beamed proudly. “Most beautiful national park in these United States, in my opinion. But Krane’s smart. He set up his place on the very edge, where we can’t touch him. And on top of that, he’s claiming Maricopa Indian in his blood. He’s claiming land rights of some kind or other. And I reckon the courts won’t get it sorted out for years.”

“He has money, then?”

“Nope. He has the top law firm in Phoenix working pro bono for him. That feller is certainly the persuasive type.”

And for the first time since they’d met, the sheriff looked grim. But only for a moment.

He was a behemoth of a man, at least six and a half feet tall. There was no flab – it was all muscle. He had hands as large as catcher’s mitts, a fact that had alarmed Holmes when they had first shook. But his manner was altogether relaxed and jovial. A laughing giant, the detective had decided.

As well as his beige uniform, he was wearing impenetrable dark glasses. And there was a massive white hat perched on his enormous head.

“And three of his followers have died so far, you say?” Holmes asked.

Moore nodded. “None of them in his encampment. All of them out here. Which makes me figure they were trying to get away.”

“And human hand seemed to have played no part in any of the deaths?”

Holmes had already had this explained, but was trying to fix it clearly in his rather muddled thoughts.

“None. One, a young woman, died of a rattlesnake bite. Another, a man, from scorpion stings. And the final one, another gal – tarantulas.”

“But I thought that was a myth?”

Moore pursed his thick lips for a second. “And you’re absolutely right. One tarantula bite won’t kill you. But forty or fifty will.”

Holmes felt such a shock run through his frame that his surroundings were momentarily forgotten.

“And is such an occurrence even likely?”

“Darnedest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Were there any ligature marks?” Holmes tried.

Perhaps the unfortunate woman had been tied down while the spiders bit her.

“Buzzards and coyotes got to her before we did. You couldn’t have found ‘Poppa’ on the Tattooed Lady. It was the same for all of them. We had to judge the cause of their demise by the type of venom in their veins. That’s to say, what veins we could find.”

They continued on in silence for a while, the fantastical landscape around them shimmering in a heat haze. Finally, some man-made shapes appeared in front of them which gradually coalesced. The great detective had been told about this too. He felt his heart skip a whole beat.

These were none other than tepees or wigwams, about a hundred of them, all stretched out in even lines across an emptier-than-usual stretch of desert floor. And there were modern Western people living in them?

Little moved in the encampment, and that had to be down to the heat as well. He thought he spotted a few tent flaps being pulled aside as they rolled closer. But no one emerged.

Moore finally braked and switched the engine off, then proceeded to give Holmes a hurried lecture on the rules regarding walking around in such a desert.

“Don’t go stepping over any low bushes – they might have rattlesnakes underneath. Don’t go turning over any stones, or sticking your hands in any holes. And if you see a mountain lion come running toward you … say the Lord’s Prayer, real damned fast!”

He exploded with another huge bark of a laugh, so massive this time that it shook the entire vehicle.

And then he reached into the back of the car, and produced another big white hat, almost exactly like his own.

“You’ll be needing this as well,” he explained, clamping it down over the detective’s head.

To which, the bewildered Englishman could only mumble, “Thank you.”

It was like stepping out into a kiln. Holmes could feel the terrible heat smack him in the face, and in an instant he was bathed in sweat, his eyes were stinging from it. Maybe he ought to invest in some dark glasses too? Except that he disliked the way that they distorted one’s perspective of the things around you.

He wiped a sleeve across his brow. And, as his vision cleared, he saw they finally had company. A man had stepped out from the nearest tent. And this had to be the leader of the commune, Eli Barnsford Krane.

Holmes had seen no pictures of the fellow, and had not been sure what to expect. But he felt his heart sink a little when he took the man’s appearance in. The words that came to mind immediately were ‘powerful’ and ‘knavish’. This was not some semi-comic Fagin. This was far more like the taller, nastier brother of Bill Sykes.

Eli Krane stood practically as tall as Moore. He was far thinner though – rangy, wiry, the muscles on his bare arms standing out like hawsers. His face was narrow, with a pointed chin and a hatchet of a nose. His eyes, Holmes could see, were black and dead looking. His skin was heavily tanned, for sure, but there seemed to be another quality to it. That of indelible griminess. Put this man under a shower for a week and you would still not clean him up entirely. And when he looked across at them and grinned, Holmes could see his teeth were bad.

The man was dressed in filthy jeans, brown leather boots and a black leather waistcoat which had nothing underneath. A brightly coloured bandana wrapped around his long and greasy locks topped off his unwholesome appearance.

And he was chewing on something the whole while that he stared across at them. Holmes preferred not to imagine what.

“Eli,” his companion acknowledged, one hand resting on his belt beside his gun.

“You got nothing else to do but come out here and pester me, Moore?” came the gravelly reply.

Sherlock Holmes was still trying to guess how old the man might be. By his body and the upright way he held himself, Krane was maybe in his late thirties. But by his eyes, perhaps a decade older.

“Just being neighbourly,” Sheriff Moore answered calmly.

Several more tent flaps were being pulled aside, and Holmes could feel eyes on him.

“Just harassment, more like. This is private land and we’ve done nothing wrong.”

Holmes had already been shown the man’s criminal record. There was everything from minor violent crime and drugs to mail fraud and embezzlement. He had been born in Texas, and had moved from town to town in the American Southwest, leaving a trail of robbed and cheated people everywhere he went. So how was this man qualified to lead any kind of community?

“This is disputed land,” Moore was correcting him, “and the day that you do nothing wrong, I’ll eat the goddamn tyres on that truck.”

Krane looked unconcerned, standing akimbo and tipping his head to one side, his whole expression feigning boredom. He swallowed whatever it was he had been chewing.

“You like hearing from my lawyers, don’t you, sheriff? Maybe you’re just plain queer for them.”

He took note of the way that Harlan covered his annoyance with a rather tightened grin, then turned his attention to Holmes.

“You don’t look like you’re from around here, pilgrim. What’s your interest in all this?”

“This here’s Mr Sherlock Holmes, from London, England,” Moore put in bluntly. “Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

Krane lost his bored look and his dark eyes brightened. “No kidding? You really him?”

He stepped up closer. When he moved, Holmes noticed, it was as smoothly as an animal. The detective was careful not to flinch back.

Krane lowered his head several inches, peering at Holmes through his bushy eyebrows.

“They say you’re immortal. Is that right?”

“Apparently so,” Holmes replied.

They were close enough together, now, that he could smell the fellow’s breath, and it was not pleasant.

Krane grinned through those rotted teeth of his.

“The Old Gods really have smiled on you then. You have my admiration.”

What ‘Old Gods’? Holmes wondered. But he kept it to himself.

“But I’m a little puzzled, Mr Holmes. What would bring a fine, upstanding English feller like yourself all the way out here to my humble commune?”

“The deaths,” was the brief answer.

And Holmes watched the man’s eyes carefully when he said that, but to no avail. They remained like anthracite, giving away nothing.

“The natural deaths. I thought that was already established. Sure, those people came from here. Sure, they lived under my guidance for a while. But they were all of voting age, and I wasn’t their daddy.”

Krane lifted his fingertips and spread them like a deck of cards.

“Could I help it if they went wandering off into a desert as hostile as this one? Is it my fault that they came to grief? They knew me, then they died. But one thing has nothing to do with the other.”

He had mentioned ‘guidance’ And Holmes couldn’t help but wonder what form that precisely took.

“Three have died, in the course of the last six months,” he pointed out.

“And it’s very sad, I’ll give you that. I knew those people personally.” Krane actually had the nerve to place a palm over his heart. “But what are you saying? That I turned into a snake? I turned into a scorpion? That’s a pretty far-fetched conclusion, Mr Holmes, sir.”

The grin on his face had grown even nastier the whole while he’d been speaking. And in comparison, Harlan Moore’s expression had become a lot less jovial. This man had them over a proverbial barrel, and he knew it.

But they were no longer alone in this part of the desert. The detective tore his gaze from Krane and looked around.

Some two dozen followers had emerged from the nearby tents and half surrounded them, but in a curious rather than an aggressive manner. And what a most peculiar sight they made.

They were all far younger than their leader, most of them in their early twenties or even their late teens. There was an even divide between male and female, they were tanned and healthy and attractive-looking. The women were in either indecently short woven dresses, or in bikinis with fringes dangling from them. The men were dressed like Krane, or else bare-chested altogether. They all wore boots – how could you not, on such terrain? But most of them had feathers in their hair, and a few had streaks of bright paint on their faces.

They seemed to be trying to ‘go native’ in other words. Holmes took that in carefully, then brought his attention back to the rascal stood in front of him.

“And what exactly might the philosophy of this commune be?” he enquired politely.

Krane spread his hands again. “It’s obvious, ain’t it? We completely reject the modern world and all its madness. We have turned our back on that, and gone back to living how the human race was supposed to live, before technology subverted us.”

They’d rejected science, in other words. It was not the first example Holmes had heard of that, but this seemed an extreme one. Gazing round the camp again, he could not see a generator anywhere, nor any item run by batteries. The only concession to this age at all was a rusted old Jeep parked behind Krane’s tent. Americans must have their cars, was his wry thought.

This community had managed to sink a well, and that must have taken more than a few shovels. Otherwise, he might have stepped back several centuries.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that you expect to survive in an environment as harsh as this one without the slightest modern contrivance?”

“Sure. The Indians did it for centuries, so why shouldn’t we?”

“And besides,” Krane added, raising up his eyes and lifting his hands slightly, “we have the Old Gods looking after us.”

And there it was again, that oblique pagan reference. There were no such things as any ‘Old Gods’. If Krane had gotten these young people to believe in nonsense of that sort, he truly was a scoundrel.

Holmes regarded them again. They barely blinked as they stared back. Their pretty young faces were expressionless as cattle, and he found himself wondering if their leader had managed to mesmerise them in some way.

So many of them, though? More were coming forward the whole time, venturing out from the rows of wigwams. There’d been examples in the past of mass hypnotism but … so many, over such a timescale?

“You’re all here of your free will, then?” he asked out loud to the assembled mob.

“Well of course—” Krane began.

Holmes raised a hand of his own.

“I’m asking them, not you.”

And he stared bleakly at them.

One by one, these children nodded. Several of them even smiled. At first glance, at least, they seemed entirely happy with this primitive existence. But then Holmes noticed something that gave him genuine cause to revise that.

Right at the very back of the group, there was a dark-haired girl – about eighteen years old and terribly pretty – who was neither smiling nor nodding. Her face was stiff. Her eyes were very wide.

The great detective wasn’t sure if he should bring her to the others’ notice. It occurred to him he might be putting her in danger. But she might well be in danger anyway, considering what had happened to the other three. And that made Holmes’ mind up.

He abruptly began marching in her direction. Krane tried to grab hold of his sleeve, but Holmes brushed him off.

“What do you think you’re doing, pilgrim?”

“I’d just like to have a little chat.”

It would be no such thing, of course. But there was no other way to do this.

Holmes stopped in front of the young woman, who was lovely in a baby-faced way. She was very thin, but not malnourished. And was holding herself with her shoulders stooped, her whole upper body trying to draw in on itself. Indeed, she looked considerably alarmed to have become the focus of everyone’s attention.

He ignored that.

“And you, madam?” he asked her firmly. “Are you happy here?”

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. She looked as though she wished the ground might open up beneath her.

“Amy?” Holmes heard Krane utter behind him.

So that was her name. He waited.

The girl wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was staring bewilderedly into her leader’s face. A strange light flared up in her eyes, and a shudder ran right through her narrow limbs.

She appeared to have forgotten where she was for a brief moment.

Then she turned to Holmes and blurted, “Yes, of course. Of course I am. Why do you even ask?”

And before another word could be said, she had turned around and bolted. Holmes watched gravely as she disappeared into a tent.

“Satisfied?” Krane was asking.

No, not at all. There was something terribly wrong going on here. But Holmes, of course, did not say that.

* * *

Some time later that afternoon, Sheriff Moore phoned Holmes in his room and told him, “We’ve found her records. Amy Hamilton from Boise, Idaho. We got her down as a runaway, but from a year back. She’s eighteen now, and her own person.”

“Theoretically,” Holmes pointed out.

The sheriff’s tone became a little more uncertain. “Are you sure that it was wise, bringing Krane’s attention to her like that? She was obviously unhappy about something, and I can’t imagine he’d be too delighted.”

“He’ll keep his eye on her,” Holmes said. “Which means that, for the next couple of days at least, she’ll find it hard to run away. Considering what happened to the others who attempted that, I’d say that might work to her advantage.”

Except that when he put the handset down, he let out a lengthy breath. By God, he hoped that he was right – that he had not endangered the poor woman.

It was going to be a waiting game from this point on. Holmes stared out through his window at the desert. He could have chosen one of the luxurious hotels in town, but instead had opted for an old but pleasant motel on the city’s very edge. The patterns on the furniture were faded, but the room was very clean. The television set was practically a relic, but it worked.

The foliage of the Sonoran plains was clearly visible from here. The shadows across it were beginning to lengthen.

Holmes felt impatience grip him, but he reined it in. He forced himself to read a while. Then – once the purple light of evening had begun to grip the landscape – he phoned a local takeout and ordered a meal. The young Hispanic fellow who brought it to him was extremely cheerful. Since leaving the artificiality of Las Vegas behind, he had come to genuinely like this south-west part of the United States. The landscapes were stunning, obviously. And the people, although unrefined, were friendly and hospitable to a fault.

Harlan Moore might strike you as a big grinning buffoon when you first met him, but the man had a shrewdness that he kept well hidden, and Holmes liked the cut of the man’s jib.

The skies began to darken, but there were still a couple of hours to be killed. Holmes switched on the TV, flicked through the channels, finding only the usual piffle, half of it in Spanish. He finally ordered up a movie, one of the Star Trek ones with the original cast. It wasn’t simply the imagination of the show that fascinated him – the far-flung cultures and the alien races. That was all very intriguing, of course, but there were many fictions of that kind these days. No, it was the mind-set of the characters themselves that he most warmed to.

Americans they might be. But Kirk, McCoy and all the others – to Holmes’ mind – embodied none other than the spirit and the morals of the long-dead British Empire. Courage. Honesty. Devotion to duty. A selflessness in the face of danger. A firm conviction of what things were right and what were wrong.

When they explored – which they always did boldly – it seemed as though the blood of Burton, Speke and Livingstone flowed through their veins. And when they were forced to do battle, they went about it with the sound heart and the steady hand of a Kitchener or Gordon.

How marvellous to find such attitudes still alive in this modern age. Except that it was only fiction.

The harsh truth was – and Holmes knew it only too well – that even in his own country of origin, the principles which drove the Empire had been long ago abandoned. Greed was good and self was all these days. Little wonder that so many people tried to reject this society in favour of a simpler one.

His mind turned sadly to the young folk in the desert. But he tried to forget about them for a while, fixing his attention on the details of the movie’s plot.

By the time the tale was over, the scene outside his window – which was just beside the TV – was completely black. It was gone nine o’ clock. Holmes crossed over to the glass and peered out sombrely.

This far from any light pollution, the desert sky was simply wonderful, huge clusters of stars twinkling like gemstones. The terrain beneath them looked like an enormous cardboard cut-out. A shooting star flashed through the firmament. It seemed a shame to spoil it all by motoring out.

But Holmes had a job to do, an important and – when his thoughts turned to the young woman again – an urgent one. Checking that he had his room keys, he went out to the vehicle he’d hired for himself earlier today. He had not told Sheriff Moore of this.

He had been careful in choosing the right make for the job, and had settled upon an Isuzu Trooper, one of the sturdiest examples of Japanese manufacturing. Holmes had kept its existence to himself. He needed to do a little reconnoitring on his own, and doubted that the good sheriff would be overly happy about that prospect.

Yes, there was an element of danger. This was unfamiliar territory for such as he. But Holmes had lived a good long time, had travelled much and was entirely capable. So he did not expect that he was going to come to any harm.

When he climbed inside, there was a small bag on the passenger seat, which he had packed with the equipment that he needed. Holmes turned the ignition and flipped on the powerful headlights. And before long, he was headed back the same way they had gone this afternoon.

He had been extremely careful, when Sheriff Moore had brought him out here, to take note of every detail that went past him. The shape of each bush, the size of each cacti, and how many lifted arms every saguaro had. He had created a mental map, in fact, in three dimensions. And he recognised these details even in the dark.

Holmes turned off the freeway at the exact right spot, then followed the rutted track. He killed his headlights again long before he reached the camp, navigating easily by starlight.

A large bonfire came in sight, its flickering amber glow washing across the conical walls of the nearby tepees. Human shapes were moving around it. Should he stay inside the car? But his view down here was limited. He would be better going on the roof.

If the Sonora had been dead during the daylight hours, that was no longer the case. A wall of sound closed in around him as he opened the car door. The hum of insects, the chirrup of cicadas and crickets, and a clicking noise that he supposed might be beetles. A nightbird was crying somewhere, and he heard shuffling sounds from the undergrowth.

Everything had been asleep and hidden when he’d first arrived here. But now it was awake and on the search for food, and that included pumas and coyotes.

Still, he had a powerful handgun inside the bag. The detective hefted it out and then clambered up onto the Trooper’s roof. He sat down crosslegged underneath the diamond-spangled sky, and produced from the bag a pair of powerful binoculars.

How had these people survived in this impossible terrain for quite so long? They had water, he knew that. As for food, well, several species of cacti were edible, the prickly pear for instance. As for meat, it was not hugely palatable, but could be found. Holmes adjusted the binoculars’ focus, and could see that one young man nearby the fire was roasting something on a pointed stick. It appeared to be a lizard, maybe three feet long.

Sheriff Moore had already described their backgrounds. Amy Hamilton might be a runaway, but a good deal of the rest were not. They were college educated, from professional families. They had been raised with every benefit of modern society, in other words. But then they had rejected it.

The whole thing still bewildered him. In his day, ‘progress’ was the watchword of the age. Modern science, modern innovation were the real hopes for the human race’s future. Whereas today, with such astonishing amounts of progress made, some people were turning their faces from it.

Yes, some people were turning their gazes back towards the realms of superstition, and a more primitive way of life. Technology had not given them what they wanted, what they needed.

There was a sudden heavy rustle in the bushes nearest him. Holmes’ left hand went for the gun inside his bag, but no creature emerged. The great detective smiled ruefully. He had similarly surveyed a location during his attempts to discover the truth behind the Baskerville case, but the Sonoran Desert was a considerably more challenging environment than Dartmoor.

He returned his gaze to the people round the fire, tightening the focus of his glasses even further. They were eating now, and passing flasks of what he supposed were fermented drink around. There were several cacti, he recalled, that had hallucinogens in their sap, and knowing Krane’s past as he did he had no doubt that that kind of substance was involved. In which case, these misguided young folk would begin becoming wilder soon. He scanned the encampment desperately for Amy, but he could not find her.

As he had supposed, most of the drinkers climbed to their feet in another while. They were dancing frantically, heads lurching from side to side, arms waving in an almost spastic fashion. The firelight made their eyes like mirrors. They seemed to have forgotten the modern, normal world completely.

He finally caught a glimpse of Krane, and homed his glasses in on the unkempt, rangy figure. Krane was not dancing, but was standing very near the fire. His head was tipped right back, and his arms were raised the whole way to the heavens.  And he seemed to be chanting something.

Holmes had taught himself to lip-read – it was quite a useful trick – but he realised after a few moments that the words the man was saying were not English, nor any language he had ever come across.

A sudden rumble brought his own head up. His brow furrowed with genuine surprise. A few minutes ago, this had been a perfectly clear night. But now, a storm was gathering. The stars were being blotted out. The clouds forming above the camp were black as ink, impenetrably dark. When he looked at Krane again, the man was shouting out those obscure words. And the dancers all around him looked like they were in the grip of a trance.

Lightning began flashing downwards almost frantically. Bolts struck the desert all around the camp. Anyone in their right mind would have headed for cover, but none of these people did.

Was it Holmes’ imagination, or were the clouds forming into a shape? The sensible part of his mind rebelled against that notion. It was merely a coincidence – it had to be.

Krane was now straining as high as he could, almost as though he were trying to lift himself into the air. Holmes could see the tendons standing out in his gaunt limbs. Veins were bulging on his forehead, and his eyes were showing too much white.

When suddenly, three bolts of lightning hurtled down at once. They joined together, halfway to the man.

Then struck him.

Holmes practically dropped the binoculars. His heart was banging in his chest, his breathing was constricted. And when he finally managed to re-gather his wits, when he focused on the spot where the fellow had been …

Eli Krane was still standing there, alive and upright.

And the man was grinning wolfishly.

It took quite a while for Holmes’ fogged mind to take in the event he’d witnessed. And it was not simply a matter of Krane’s remarkable survival either. At the moment that the lightning had flashed down and joined, Holmes’ gaze had risen to it.

And he swore he had seen something up in the high heavens. That shape the darkened clouds had tried to form … it had suddenly been moving, like a living creature. He was certain of it.

But it was like no entity that he had ever seen. There’d been too many swaying tentacles. Too many darkly glimmering eyes.

He tried to tell himself that it was just a trick being played by the blackness and the lightning. But the images inside his head, they would not go away.

He remembered Krane’s talk of the ‘Old Gods’. And was it one of those that had been summoned here tonight? Did Krane derive his power from such a being? And did that explain the way in which his former followers had died?

As his thoughts began to finally clear, a fresh sense of urgency swept over the detective. A cold shudder ran down his spine. Amy Hamilton was on the verge of being an apostate too. She clearly wished to leave this place. And if her treacherous thoughts had been noticed by some supernatural thing, then she was in more serious danger than he could ever have imagined.

He raised the glasses to his face again, and scanned the encampment desperately. Now that the ceremony – he supposed that it should be called that – was over, the drugged young people had become more languorous. They were mostly slumped across the ground, and some of the men and women were entangled.

Then he spotted her at last. She was over to the right-hand side of Krane’s tent. And the man himself had wandered across to her. He was swaying drunkenly, and had a flask clutched in one hand. But his other arm was wrapped around the terrified young woman. He was pawing at her in the most licentious fashion. And she was trying to get away, but he was far too strong.

All of Holmes’ previous shock and worry was forgotten. A furious rage filled the detective’s chest. Unhand her, you blaggard, were the words he thought. And yet he was too far away to give them voice.

He was considering climbing back inside his car, driving it into the camp and confronting the scoundrel – whatever perils that might entail – when Amy finally broke loose of Krane’s grip. She turned and ran, scurrying away between the wigwams. And her assailant looked in a mind to pursue her, but then another of his followers, a tall blonde in a fringed bikini, wandered over to him and put her arms round his neck. She proved herself to be more open to his lecherous intentions. Krane forgot about the small, skinny brunette.

Relief swept through Holmes. He settled down, his heart still thumping. But there was not the slightest doubt left by this stage … Amy must be rescued from this place, and as soon as was humanly possible.

* * *

“Excuse me, sir, but are you seriously crazy?” Sheriff Moore asked when he learned where Holmes had been the previous night.

They were standing outside the motel. Holmes had explained what he had done, but only part of what he’d witnessed. Bolts of lightning? Spirits in the sky? He had little doubt that if he told Moore that the man would try to have him institutionalised.

“The desert’s certainly an interesting place at night.”

“A what?”

“But as you can see, I came to no harm.”

Moore planted both his huge fists on his hips and his mouth twisted. “More by luck than any judgement, if you ask me.”

Which was beside the point. The main thing was, they needed to save Amy.

“You saw how anxious she was to leave,” Holmes pointed out.

“She seemed a little nervous, sure. But then she told us she was happy in the commune. Those were her own words.”

Holmes almost exploded. “She was under duress!”

“Which you’d have to prove in a court of law,” the sheriff answered calmly. “And could you?”

Holmes could see how, from a legal point of view, the man was absolutely right. This was a nation where due process was taken very seriously indeed. And so if he was to get Amy to safety, he would have to give the sheriff grounds for ‘probable cause’ at the very least.

He turned it over slowly in his mind, saw what the solution had to be. Holmes was not the kind of man who took pleasure in being dishonest, but there were greater matters of importance here than his sense of personal integrity.

He cleared his throat, then told his colleague, “I saw her being restrained, last night.”

Harlan Moore’s dark lenses seemed to bore into his gaze. But Holmes had been expecting that, and did not even flinch.

“Halfway through the dancing, I watched as the girl tried to run away. Krane noticed it, and sent several of his young men after her. They pinned her down like wild animals. Then they each took hold of an arm and a leg and carried her back to the encampment. She was screaming and wailing the whole way.”

It was nothing like what he’d seen happen, but the great detective kept his expression blank.

“You prepared to swear that in front of a judge?” the sheriff asked.

“I am.”

Harlan Moore stared at the ground between his massive feet for several seconds, then his head came up. The policeman was shrewd enough to realise what was going on here, and the knowledge showed on his wide face. He simultaneously looked concerned and sympathetic.

“And, Mr Holmes, are you aware what the penalty for perjury is in Arizona State?”

Holmes stared back at him unblinkingly.

“Severe, I’m sure. But the alternative consequences? They could be considerably worse.”

Moore studied him a few seconds longer, and then broke out into a huge, satisfied smile.

“Okay, then,” he agreed. “Let’s go get her.”

* * *

Twelve patrol cars – most of them with two men in them – showed up in the end. Holmes was impressed by how much manpower the police department could throw at a single problem. They rolled into the commune in an elongated row, their beacons flashing. And when Moore’s people got out, half of them were holding riot guns.

Eli Krane, of course, was furious.

“You can’t do this! She’s here willingly! This is kidnap, and harassment, and a Fascist interference with our natural rights!”

Moore treated the man like a yapping little dog, ignoring him except to wave a warrant underneath his nose.

“You can explain all that to Judge Pendergast – tomorrow morning.”

Krane was threatening to bring his lawyers down on them again when they rolled away. His yelling, gesticulating figure diminished in their rear window.

“Unless he has a cell phone hidden somewhere – and I cannot count that out – that’ll involve a drive into town in that old Jeep of his,” the sheriff growled.

“It gives us time,” Holmes nodded.

He had one arm around the slim young woman, who was sat between them, shivering beneath a blanket. And she only found the strength to speak once that they had reached the freeway.

“There was witchcraft,” she blurted, her voice extremely small and shaky. “He called up monsters. Awful things. And I was terrified.”

Moore glanced across at her, then stared back at the road, his forehead creasing.

“Called up?”

“I told you there was dancing, and some form of ceremony,” Holmes tried to intervene.

“No!” Amy broke across him desperately. “There was more than that! He called the Old Gods to him, almost nightly, and they gave him power!”

Moore threw Holmes a look of perfect disbelief. And then the big man shrugged, seeming to attribute what she’d said to too much sun, too much peyote, and perhaps hysteria at the circumstances she was in.

“You settle down there, miss,” he reassured her. “People see all kinds of stuff out in the desert.”

All that Amy did was try to pull the blanket right over her head.

“He’ll come after us,” Holmes heard her murmur. “He has powers you couldn’t believe, and he will kill us with them.”

Holmes rubbed at her shoulder gently. It was all he could do, for the moment.

He was not even officially in on this whole business. It was a police matter now. Moore dropped him off at his motel.

“What are you going to do with her?” Holmes enquired, climbing out.

“Have a doctor check her over, and then keep her in protective custody. I reckon we can take care of her till evening before Krane’s lawyers show up.”

“And then?”

“A bus ticket to Idaho ain’t beyond the department’s budget. She’ll be out of here, and she’ll be safe.”

“I certainly hope so.”

He was just turning away when a shout from Harlan halted him.

“Mr Holmes?”

He swivelled around to face the blue-and-white car again.

“You didn’t come here to protect this woman. You came here to solve those three deaths. And so far as I can see …” and Moore was peering at him quizzically, “… you’re no further along at all with that.”

“We’ll see,” Sherlock Holmes replied enigmatically. “I get the strangest feeling – in regard to those particular matters – that something or another might still show up.”

He was back to the waiting game. It was part of a detective’s lot. There was little with which to occupy himself out on the edge of town – a mall about a half a mile away, but he had scant interest in that.

Holmes went back to his room. He was no longer in the mood to read. He flung himself out on his bed, trying to relax. But a strange sense of apprehension had gripped him. It was all very well proclaiming ‘wait and see’, but wait for what precisely? See what?

From what he had observed the night before, he had little doubt that Amy’s pronouncements had been accurate. A man who could survive a triple-bolt of lightning? He’d already had experience of supernatural beings in Las Vegas, and could only try to guess what kind of powers Krane was possessed of.

To take his mind from that, he picked up the remote from his nightstand and switched on the TV again. There was only the same lacklustre rubbish as the last time, and he didn’t want to watch the same movie again. He flipped through all the channels and then switched it off. It made small popping, sizzling noises as it cooled.

And – suddenly tired from his excursion the previous night and the scant sleep he’d got after it was over – Holmes fell into a doze, during which he had the most peculiar dreams.

* * *

He hoped he was still dreaming when he finally awoke.

Because a rattlesnake was coiled up on his chest.

This was real. He could feel its weight on him, its subtle pressure. And the quality of the light from his window had distinctly changed, which only happened when you were awake.

Holmes became completely still, holding down the violent panic that was trying to surge up through him. He controlled his breathing, making it very quiet and gentle, and tried not to blink. But the snake seemed to have noticed he had woken up. Its head lifted a few inches, its tongue flickered out. Its rattle sounded briefly, and then stilled again.

Something began sliding over his outstretched left arm. Holmes slowly moved his gaze in that direction, to see another serpent, maybe four feet long, making its way across the mattress.

A third one was down by his feet. A fourth was wrapped around the headboard. And he thought that he could make out more shapes moving on the floor around the bed. The door to his room, he could see, was slightly open.

If he tried to cut and run then he was surely done for. These things, he knew, struck at much greater than human speed. And their venom, at the very least, would paralyse him. He’d be at the mercy of these filthy beasts for heaven knew how long.

His heart had begun hammering again. He made a conscious effort to slow it, using techniques that he had acquired in the East. And tried to think this matter through. Even for a man of his intellect, it was difficult.

What did he know about rattlesnakes?

Ah yes, he thought he saw it.

The TV remote still had to be lying to his right-hand side, where he’d let it go when he had fallen asleep. As carefully as he could, he began feeling around for it.

The head of the creature on his chest began to rise again. Holmes stopped moving altogether. He only resumed his tenuous search when he was certain the thing had calmed fully down. Rattlesnakes only struck in what they thought was self-defence, he understood. And would not harm him unless they thought that he was moving to attack them.

His fingertips closed around cool plastic. He worked them gradually up the remote casing till they reached the ‘power’ button, which he pressed.

Immediately, all of the snakes’ rattles started buzzing. A voice was coming from the TV speakers, far too loudly. Holmes felt himself begin to perspire, and wondered if his guests could smell that. He worked with his fingertips again and found the volume switch, and turned it down.

Then he waited, still as stone.

When he’d stood next to the set yesterday evening – having had it on for a couple of hours – he had noticed that, old as it was, the innards of the television were producing a great deal of heat. And he already knew that rattlesnakes were possessed of some form of natural infra-red detector. It was how they found their prey at night. They were attracted to heat.

So all he had to do was lie there while the set warmed up. It was a simple course of action, and a very passive one. And yet it was practically unbearable.

How many minutes were ticking by? There was no way to really tell. He could not see the room’s sole clock. But gradually, the shape on top of him began uncoiling.

Its face moved over to his own and studied it. Holmes stopped breathing altogether.

Then it turned away. The thing slid off him. And the other ones were doing the same.

The great detective waited till they were all off the mattress before making his next move.

He flipped the channels quickly till he found a noisy shoot-out scene from some police show. And, satisfied that it would do the trick, he turned the volume up to full.

The crashing of gunfire filled the room with a wild vibration. The rattlesnakes immediately went berserk, striking furiously at the set and screen.

And distracted that way, they paid him no attention when he jumped across to the door and was out.

Holmes slammed it behind him and practically collapsed. He might well have done, if a new thought hadn’t kept him upright.

If this was happening here, then what exactly was happening elsewhere?

He fumbled for his cell, which he had remembered to charge the night before.

“Goddamn it!” he heard Harlan Moore yell when the call was answered at the other end.

Holmes thought he could hear the stamp of a boot, and something like a crunch.

“Sheriff?”

“Mr Holmes? Where are you?”

Since they’d first become acquainted, Holmes had never heard the man so flustered.

“More to the point, where are you?”

He could now hear other men yelling furiously in the background.

“The station house! And we’ve been overrun! We’ve got scorpions and tarantulas up the wazoo! Hundreds of ’em!”

The detective tried to keep a cool head but, given the circumstances, it was a great effort

“An unnatural occurrence, surely?”

“Well of course it is! We’re in the middle of the goddamn city!”

Holmes kept trying to bring a sense of calm to the occasion.

“Sheriff, where is Amy Hamilton right now?”

“She’s in a holding cell.”

“With a solid door or bars?”

“What difference does that make?” the sheriff spluttered.

And then he seemed to realise the distinction. Arachnids such as those assaulting them could easily climb through bars.

“She’s in more danger than ever,” Sherlock Holmes explained. “You have to get her out of there. Get her out of the city, and of Arizona state.”

“I don’t understand!” Moore yelled. “What’s going on here?”

“It’s the work of Krane.”

“But how’s he doing this?”

Holmes pursed his lips. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

Moore took a moment to absorb that, and then yielded.

“Okay, okay! I’ll drive her over the state line myself. But what the hell are you going to do?”

“The only thing that can be done,” Holmes told him in a low and steady voice. “I am going to confront Krane directly.”

* * *

He must have been asleep far longer than he’d realised. It was already well into the afternoon. Fortunately, he still had his car keys on him, since he did not much fancy going back inside that room.

He’d already recovered his gun from the bag in the Isuzu’s trunk – it was now tucked into his waistband. Holmes powered back along the freeway, careless of speed limits.

Another age of jolting and the rows of conical tents came back in sight. He did not even slow down when he saw them. He just powered the Trooper into the encampment, stopping it in front of Krane’s abode.

There seemed to be no one around. The desert was completely still. The sun, beating in through his windshield, almost blinded him. But then he opened up his door, and heard Krane shouting to him.

“Hey there, pilgrim!”

Holmes squinted in that direction. He could make out the silhouette of the man about a hundred yards off to the west. But there appeared to be other shapes around him. Were they crouching people? Holmes moved in to get a better look.

And stopped abruptly, his hand going to his gun. His jaw dropped open at the horrifying sight that was revealed.

Krane was standing calmly in the middle of the desert, a pair of saguaros rearing up behind him. He had his arms folded across his chest, a look of casual haughtiness on his gaunt face.

But between him and the giant cacti, a pack of some dozen coyotes was moving around. They stopped as he approached, and stared at him in lethal unison. Holmes felt his gut clenching up.

And then his whole body almost convulsed with astonishment. To either side of Eli Krane was sitting a huge mountain lion. The massive beasts were as still as statues, and yet Holmes knew that they were real. This seemed wholly impossible, and his mind struggled to take it in.

When he saw the detective’s confoundment, Krane responded with another nasty grin. He reached down with his right hand, scratched the head of one of the enormous cats. There was a purring rumble from its belly.

Holmes’ hand went to the butt of his gun.

“What’re you going to do with that peashooter, pilgrim?” Krane yelled out. “You might take down one or two of my furry cousins here, but not all of them by any means.”

“I could shoot you!”

Krane shook his head. “And you’d be torn to bits a second later. Besides, I’m not armed.” He held his hands up. “And I don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes would shoot an unarmed man. It’s not his style.”

“You are armed with magic!”

He had taken down another sorcerer for that reason, not too long ago.

“That’s true enough,” Krane conceded, looking slightly wistful.

Then he decided to explain.

“My last spell in prison, I spent three years sharing a cell with a Maricopa Indian. Yep, an elderly medicine man. He taught me how to parlay with the Old Gods, see. And them big fellers, they have come to truly love me. They regard me almost as a favourite son, and give me all the power I could ever want. I am the king of this whole desert.”

The man stretched his right arm out and swept it in a broad circle with his fingertips splayed.

“Birds and beasts, they answer to my call and do my bidding. Insects and arachnia … when I speak, they listen good. The plants themselves bend their ears to hear my words, and the very winds and clouds await my next command.”

This sounded like the kind of talk you might hear from some megalomaniacal lunatic. But Holmes was afraid there might be actual foundation to it. He had already seen sufficient that he could not bring himself to disbelieve.

He took another step. The right-hand lion, the one that Krane had petted, started getting to its feet, a growl emerging from its throat. But Krane restrained it.

Raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What exactly do you want here, Mr Holmes?”

“You already know that! Leave the girl alone!”

“Sorry, pilgrim, no can do. Mercy, you see, is a form of weakness to the Old Gods’ way of thinking.” His hand pointed at the skies. “And if I show weakness, just a little bit, I promise you that they won’t like it. Deal’s already done, son. Amy is as good as dead.”

Such fury sprung up in Sherlock Holmes’ breast that he forgot the danger he was in completely.

“Sheriff Moore will protect her! I will protect her!”

But Krane only looked bored.

“Oh, you’ll try. But you can’t possibly succeed, since I control the very elements of nature.”

He chuckled.

“Death’s already bearing down on Amy. She is moving fast, but can’t outrun it. I’d get going if I were you, Mr Holmes. Your destiny awaits you … and I promise you, it ain’t a pleasant one.”

* * *

What exactly were the limits of his immortality? Holmes wondered as he powered the Isuzu back the way he’d come. If those rattlesnakes in his room had delivered numerous bites, his body would have swollen, he’d have been in agony, but he’d most likely have survived. But if some large wild animals like the ones he’d left behind tore him to pieces …?

He felt muddled again. He was not entirely sure.

If he was actually dismembered, how could continued existence be even possible?

He called the sheriff’s department in Phoenix and found out which route Harlan Moore had taken out of town. The man was apparently headed north-east, trying to make it into Colorado. Although, from what Holmes had just seen and heard, he wasn’t quite sure what good that might do.

He cleared his head and began thinking straighter, trying to imagine what form Krane’s assault might take. And when he got a proper picture of it, why, a tentative smile alighted on the great detective’s lips.

He might be making a trip to that shopping centre nearby his motel after all.

* * *

Evening was already starting to lend extra shadow to the landscape. Holmes had been on the interstate for a good couple of hours now. But he had never encountered roads like these. This one was completely straight from his position to the far horizon, and he was heading forwards at full speed. Except that every time he reached some tiny landmark in the distance, there was more road, exactly the same, stretching out ahead of him through the now barren desert.

He’d seen some other traffic when he had passed by a town. But there were no towns left, and he was completely alone out here.

The solitude ground at him. And the light continued to vanish, so that, in another half an hour, all that he could really make out was the stretch of asphalt illuminated by his own headlamps.

Another storm was trying to gather overhead, so that the stars and moon were blotted out. There was no actual lightning as yet, but Holmes could feel strong electricity on the air around him. And when he tried to contact Harlan on his cell phone, all he got was crackling, the result of the atmospherics.

But how natural were they? He couldn’t help but wonder. Krane’s words kept on ringing through his head.

He was becoming exhausted, and his eyes were getting very strained, when he thought he saw a flash of bright red light ahead. It disappeared a moment as the interstate dipped down. And then he saw it clearly.

It was a vehicle’s tail lamps. And once they’d stayed in view for half a minute, he concluded that they were not moving.

He began to slow the Trooper, concern mingling with relief. If this was the vehicle he was after, why exactly had the sheriff stopped?

He got his answer when he reached the spot. This was indeed the right SUV. But it had been pulled over by the roadside, and the front end was jacked up. Moore was down on his knees, halfway through changing a tyre, working in the glow of a large flashlight.

Just before he drew to a halt, Holmes noticed a wide streak of blood on the main body of the road. His pulse started to thump again.

But no … Amy was standing near the SUV as well, and she looked perfectly all right.

Moore squinted in the sudden wash of Sherlock Holmes’ headlamps. He was on his feet in the next instant, his hand going to his revolver. So Holmes disembarked quickly and announced himself.

“What are you doing out here?” The sheriff looked astonished. “What the heck’s going on now?”

“I might well ask you the same thing. What happened?”

“Darnedest thing I’ve ever seen. A big coyote ran out in the road in front of me, about ten minutes back, and then stopped in front of the car, almost like it wanted me to run it over. One of its bones went through the tyre. Why would any animal do that?”

“It was giving its life in the service of its king,” Holmes murmured.

Which got him a very strange look from Harlan.

Then all that was forgotten as another voice rang out.

“Damn right on that score, pilgrim!”

Standing on a boulder, about fifty yards into the desert, was the unmistakable silhouette of Eli Krane.

Lightning finally flashed, revealing the man in full. The arrogance of his bearing, and the cold, triumphant sneer upon his face, like he’d already bested them.

He couldn’t possibly have gotten here so fast in that dilapidated Jeep. It simply was not within the bounds of reason. And that realisation must have been apparent on Holmes’ face, because the king of the desert suddenly laughed.

“I release a breath and turn to dust,” he explained loudly, making a scooping motion with his fingertips. “The winds carry me wherever I wish to go, and when I’ve got there I reform again. Few men on this Earth have ever had such power. As I told you, Holmes, the Old Gods love me.”

Amy had begun cringing and whimpering. Holmes knew he should keep both hands free, and so he could not comfort her. But he stepped in front of the poor woman, to shield her from her tormentor’s direct gaze.

“Very noble, Mr Holmes. The last desperate act of a doomed man.”

Harlan Moore had picked his flashlight up. He swung it towards Holmes a moment. Wondered why all the pockets in the detective’s coat were bulging so heavily. And then he shifted the beam in Krane’s direction.

“You’re only one man!” he bellowed. “There are two of us!”

Eli’s grin got even wider. “Yep, you’re right. But there are thousands of them.”

He swung a narrow finger at the ground around them.

Holmes could hear a sudden clattering noise. And when the sheriff redirected his flashlight …

The entire terrain around them was moving. It seemed to have come alive. At first, Holmes thought that it might be the very stones and sand. But no, the light was being reflected in a hundred places. The glint of scales, the wink of chitin. There were countless tiny scuttling legs.

A solid living circle had been formed around both vehicles. It was some twelve feet deep, and was entirely composed of snakes, tarantulas, poisonous spiders and millipedes, and even a few Gila Monsters, the only venomous lizards in this country.

The mass of bodies writhed and rippled as it closed its grip around them. Amy had started wailing, but there was no time to pay any attention to that. Holmes snatched a blue cylinder from his pocket – it had a skull-and-crossbones and the large word ‘WARNING’ printed on it – and then flung it to the sheriff.

“Here, use this!”

Before his colleague could respond, he produced another, then a third, and flung them at the mass of creatures.

Both cylinders erupted, sending out big clouds of dense white powder. They were insecticide bombs, the strongest ones that he’d been able to find. He had bought them at that mall.

Holmes threw more to Harlan, then continued to dispense his own, being careful to space them evenly, so that the entire circle was affected.

It was still a frightening and uncertain process. A few scorpions scuttled forwards, out of reach of the chemicals, and he was forced to stamp on them. And the powder merely infuriated the larger snakes. They rose up, spitting, one of them merely a few yards from him.

There was a blast from Sheriff Moore’s revolver, and the creature’s head blew off.

The next sound that they heard was Eli Krane’s infuriated shriek. Holmes looked up. The man was beside himself with anger. All his haughtiness was gone, his body doubled over and his fingertips pressing to his gaunt and grimy face, which had an insane look.

And then he seemed to remember what he had become. He stood up straight, shouted a spell and swept both of his arms through the night air. A sudden howling wind blew up, and swept most of the dust away.

But it came too late. When Holmes looked down again, many of the smaller creatures were already on their backs, with their legs twitching. Another gunshot, followed by several others, told him that Moore was dealing with the larger snakes. Holmes joined in that endeavour, and reptilian flesh flew.

Another thought struck the detective.

“Krane might bring some larger beasts!”

Quick as a flash, the sheriff was at the trunk of his SUV and pulling out a lengthy hunting rifle with a sight.

Except that Holmes could now see there would probably be little need for that.

Something else had moved into view in the clouds above them.

It was the same thing that he thought he had momentarily glimpsed the previous night. The same writhing tentacles and overabundance of dark, staring eyes.

“Holy hell!” he heard Moore blurt.

Holmes did not shift his gaze from the apparition. A terrible fear was trying to well up in him, but he did not let it. He was, once again, remembering Krane’s words from earlier today, about the sheer lack of compassion that these ancient beings had.

Krane had raised his arms towards the creature.

“More power!” he was demanding. “Give me the means to defeat these heathens!”

But then Sherlock Holmes stepped forwards, and he shouted out himself, in a clear voice.

“This man,” and he jabbed a slim finger at Krane, “tried to kill me earlier today, and he did not succeed! He tried to murder all three of us just a few moments ago, and look at the result!”

He swept his arms across the carnage all around them.

“He has failed you twice in half a day! And this is your favourite son?”

Many of the looming eyes above him became pensive. Krane could see what Holmes was trying to do.

“No!” he screamed, his voice taking on the high pitch of an enraged child. “I’ve served you faithfully! I’ve brought worshippers to you, dozens of them! All I need now is a bit more power and I can finish this, I promise you!”

The gaze above him narrowed very slightly, but he did not seem to notice.

“Hit me with your lightning bolts!” he was still yelling. “Let your strength fill up my body once again! I’ll do whatever you want, I swear! Hell, I’ll not let you down!”

The skies flashed. And a lightning bolt did indeed strike down at him.

But not entirely with the same consequences as the last time Holmes had watched.

Still up on the boulder, Krane’s body went rigid. His hair stood out around his head. The colour was bled from his features, which looked utterly amazed.

The second bolt galvanised his limbs, so that they shuddered uncontrollably. His mouth flew open and his tongue came poking out. His eyes bulged from their sockets.

After the next bolt had struck him, he collapsed atop the boulder. Smoke was rising from him, and he was completely still.

But the entity above was not altogether finished with him. Lightning continued to blast down. Holmes watched with open distaste as the man’s body was turned into a blackened shell, which gradually shrank in on itself until it crumbled into dust.

Another wind, a spiralling one, blew up. The embers were whisked aloft, and disappeared into the heavens.

They were all that remained of Eli Krane. And now his masters had them. They had his soul as well, presumably. And what they’d do with it? Well, perhaps it was better not to know.

The shape above Holmes vanished, and the dark clouds started to disperse.

A while later, while a rather perplexed Sheriff Moore was tightening the bolts on the new tyre, Holmes found himself comforting Amy Hamilton. He did it gladly.

“Is it really over?” she sobbed into his shoulder.

“Absolutely.”

“But Krane, he had such incredible power.”

“Yes. And he forgot the oldest rule of all.”

When she stared up at him, mystified, Holmes allowed himself a small, tight smile.

“All power comes at a price. And the greater it is, the higher the tariff. Men like Krane believe themselves immune to that, and end up paying a tremendous cost. And, fortunately for the rest of us, that is the way that it has always been.”

THE HIDDEN SHORE

There was a serpent in Paradise. Or – to be more accurate – there was a steady string of unexplained deaths in that location, which was just as troubling.

Sherlock Holmes stood in the tiny morgue of the little hospital at the heart of Santa Augustina’s small capital, Jarvistown. He stared down at the pair of bodies on the mortuary slab, a faint touch of dismay crossing his normally stoic face. They had obviously been worked at very thoroughly by the local coroner. Their chests were disfigured by the usual Y-shaped scars and stitching, and it was obvious that the tops of their skulls had both, at some point, been removed.

“A cause of death cannot be found, you say?”

“Not a hint of one. Exactly like in all the other cases.”

Holmes swivelled around to face the man who’d brought him here. Captain Blessed Williams was a police officer after his own heart. He was a massive Caribbean man who stood at six foot five. But – unlike most of his fellow islanders – there was nothing in the least bit casual about him. His every word and movement was precise. He’d brought along a thick ream of case files for Holmes to inspect. And there was a gleam of steely determination in his gaze that the great detective recognised only too well … he saw it sometimes in his own expression, when he happened perchance to glance into a mirror.

Captain Williams was not dressed casually either. He was wearing an immaculately pressed beige linen suit, a proper shirt and tie and brown shoes of extremely lightweight leather. His only real concession to the stifling heat and humidity of his home island was a straw hat cocked a little jauntily atop his head. Holmes could not help but notice that there was a cockerel feather stuck into the stripey fabric band.

He returned his attention to the pair of corpses. Apart from the autopsy scars, they looked almost peaceful in repose. They were a man and a woman, both of them no older than their early thirties. Both of them handsome and the picture of good health. Their limbs were firm, their faces untouched by the ravages of age. And they both were tanned a deep gold-brown colour by the Caribbean sun.

According to the coroner, they’d both died very closely together, temporally. Possibly at nearly the same moment.

But the truly odd thing was that they’d been staying at separate hotels, and were not even officially a couple. The man was Michael Dowd from Baltimore. The woman was Marjorie Trenton from Calgary, Canada. By all the witnesses’ accounts, they’d only met six days ago.

“A whirlwind romance, you say?”

“The way the staff at both the Neptune and the Regency describe it, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other,” Williams assured him. “Such things are not uncommon on vacation, obviously. I checked with relatives in both their hometowns, and apparently they both had been through recent break-ups with their long-term partners.”

“So they came here on their own, adrift, forlorn …?”

“And found new life and love amongst each other. But such stories should have happy endings, Mr Holmes. Not ones like this.”

The tone in which the man said that informed Holmes that – in spite of his sharp and businesslike appearance – Captain Williams harboured a romantic aspect to his soul.

“It’s very sad, yes,” he agreed. “But what about the others?”

All the rest had perished individually. They were single, or divorced. Nine of them in total, over the course of the past eighteen months, the oldest of them forty-two. Four men. Five women. Holmes took the files that were presented to him, flipped them open, and studied the photographs of the dead faces, one by one. There had been no obvious cause for their deaths either.

“Two of these are British,” he pointed out, slightly affronted. “One of them is French. Another Dutch. And there is nothing, either by way of background or of occupation, to link any of them.”

“Save the two simple facts that they came here, and they are now dead,” the captain added.

Which got him a slightly annoyed look from Holmes, since he had just stated the obvious. It was the opposite of obvious that they were looking for, and both men knew it.

Holmes stared at the couple one last time, shaking his head sadly, and then turned away towards the mortuary door, leaving Captain Williams with no choice but to follow him.

“We’ll not find what we’re looking for in here,” the great detective said.

They proceeded along a short corridor, the paint of its walls blistering, then went out through another door into bright, dazzling sunlight. Holmes was forced to pause for a few seconds, blinded, trying to let his eyes adjust. But even while his sight was impaired, his other finely tuned senses remained in play. He could hear gentle reggae music drifting from what he imagined was a nearby bar. And his large, hooked nose – like that of an Apache Indian – was picking up a wide variety of scents. The cinnamon tang of tropical dust. The smell of cut ripe fruit. A touch of sea salt, and a hint of chicken being grilled. And then, out beyond all that, sweet pollen and lush green vegetation.

His eyelids came back open slowly, and his gaze confirmed what his olfactory senses had already told him.

Santa Augustina was one of the southernmost of the Caribbean group. It had been owned by the British during most of the Imperial years but – due to the latitude where it was situated – it had Spanish influences too. He could see a cross atop a Catholic church not far in the distance, the yellow and white papal banner fluttering beside it. Some of the locals here had Spanish names, and their cooking had a slight Hispanic influence. But that, he thought,was not the point.

Whatever history it had, this place was genuinely a paradise. It was a tiny island, in reality no more than a small mountain which had poked its way out of the sparkling sapphire waters. Beyond the flat rooftops of the capital, he could make out steeply rising slopes, clad in such a thick blanket of verdancy that he could not discern a single patch of barren earth. Wild birds called from that direction, their cries shrill and primal. He could make out clusters of wild flowers of the most profound primary hues. And there was no volcanic opening at the mountaintop. This was one of nature’s very calm and peaceful places.

He was on Jarvistown’s main street. There were the usual shops, but few of them were designed for tourists, since they rarely ventured this far in. Holmes’ gaze went towards the seaward side of town. There was another main drag off in that direction – he already knew – that was almost wholly occupied by bars and restaurants and souvenir shops. It was there that the visitors to this isle gathered, those that were in town at all. Many of the big hotels – the Neptune and the Regency included – were half a mile or more outside it.

Holmes hovered thoughtfully for a brief instant. Then he swung around on his heels and began walking away purposefully, forcing his companion to hurry to keep up.

“Mr Holmes,” poor Blessed Williams protested, “you are going in the wrong direction.”

But the great detective shook his head.

“No, sir. I most certainly am not.”

He was heading north. Away from the seafront, into the narrower streets behind the main one, where the majority of this island’s locals dwelt. Captain Williams strode along beside him with a puzzled air, but he had the sense to hold his tongue.

The buildings around them became progressively smaller, older, slightly shabbier. But the two men were, by no stretch of the imagination, entering a shantytown. Santa Augustina had done very well for itself from its tourist trade. Holmes doubted there were many people around here who were unemployed or poverty stricken.

There were gaily-coloured curtains at the windows. Lunches being cooked in several of the houses that he passed. Little cars and mopeds parked beside the kerbs. And some of the homes had wooden balconies – there were grandmothers sitting on them, or healthy-looking children leaning out across the railings. Several of them waved down to Holmes as he walked by.

A cheerful and contented place, then. He was pleased to see it.

But was rather less delighted to see something else.

Next to a couple of the porches that he passed, a small bowl of assorted fruits had been left out in the open air. Why leave good food to spoil that way? And in one case, there was a small candle burning at the centre of the curious fruit salad.

Symbols had been chalked beside the doors of other houses. They were faded with age, so that only an extremely sharp gaze would have picked them out in the first place. But they were curious representations, almost like the geometric faces that you saw on ancient masks.

In a couple of cases, too, a bunch of feathers – cockerel feathers – hung suspended from a length of twine above a hearth. Holmes’ gaze darted, very briefly, to the single one in Williams’ hat.

He was done exploring in a few more minutes.

“What exactly were you looking for?” his tall companion asked.

“Nothing in particular.” Holmes favoured the man with a tightly compressed grin. “I was simply trying to establish what kind of place this really is. And now I think I know.”

* * *

It was two hours later on that afternoon, and Holmes – to the naked eye at least – was doing absolutely nothing. He was seated by a glass-topped table on the poolside terrace of his own hotel, the Carib Royal, gazing out towards the shoreline and the sea beyond. A pina colada sat by his right elbow, brought to him by a friendly member of the hotel’s staff.

There was no need for any hat, since a huge blue and white parasol was spread out to its full extent above him. And he wore no sunglasses, since he disliked the way that they distorted one’s vision. But, just like Captain Williams, he’d refused to relax his standards of attire too much. He was wearing proper shoes and socks, lightweight linen trousers and a short-sleeved shirt.

Which was more than you could say for any of the holidaymakers round him. It was one of those changes in attitude that – despite the decades that he’d lived through since he’d left the Victorian Age behind – he could never quite get used to. He could see the sense of it while swimming, yes. Those old-style bathing costumes of his day were utterly impractical, for sure.

But the people around him – and there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them – went practically naked nearly all the time. There was no topless bathing here, for it was not allowed. But some of the men nearby wore skin-tight briefs and nothing more. And some of the younger women were clad in costumes that amounted to very little more than postage stamps, fastened with thin twine.

That latter fact left Holmes feeling extremely disturbed … and strangely fascinated.

Many of these folk were supine. They were lying on recliners, either around the pool or out in long rows on the white sands of the beach, their bare skin gleaming with oils and unguents, their eyes closed and their bodies utterly relaxed. But others – and not only the children – were at play. Fully-grown adults, in fact, were playing!

Every time he saw it, it astonished him. But they had beach balls, rubber rafts and Frisbees and badminton rackets. And were splashing in the surf or jumping down into the pool behind him, shouting and laughing like overly excited toddlers.

Would the Empire have ever been created at all if the adults of his day had behaved in this fashion? Would there even have been an Industrial Revolution, or any real progress to speak of?

But the more that he watched these cavorting people, then the more Holmes thought he understood their motivation. He had been to cities like New York, and knew how hard their regular and daily lives were. For most of fifty weeks of every year, these folk arrived in their workplaces quite early, laboured until early evening at the very least, and often later. And they took work home. Or else they had some menial job they hated, and they couldn’t wait to be away from it.

But for these two weeks of every year, they could escape from that routine. Yes, they could stop being responsible and put aside their sense of duty. And revert … the more Holmes turned the idea over, then the more it fascinated him … they could revert to being like carefree infants.

There was practically a reference that was Biblical here. For two weeks of the year, these happy souls could strip off their clothes and, in a sense, return to Eden. When he’d first thought of this place as Paradise, he’d been more accurate than he had guessed.

He could only glean so much, though, from observing at a distance. A true investigator ought to get in closer. And so Holmes downed the final dregs of his pale yellow cocktail, then got up casually and started wandering through the more crowded areas of the poolside terrace. He had the ability, while doing things like this, of making himself seem smaller, less significant, so that he could get up close to people without them genuinely noticing him. And so he passed among the gleaming bodies like some pallid ghost.

Many of these sunbathers were married couples, some of them with progeny in tow. But Blessed Williams had been right – others were single, and there were romances springing up between them. Most of those were in their early stages, merely defined by bright chatter and a great deal of eye contact. But he passed a man and woman who were sharing the same sun-bed and were wrapped around each other.

That apart, contentment was the feeling that he most got from his fellow guests.

“I’ve been coming back here every year for twelve years now,” he heard one woman with a strong Chicago accent tell her neighbour.

And he couldn’t blame her. What could match this, if you wanted rest and a romantic setting?

But, just like in the Bible, even Paradise came to an end. When he wandered back into the plush, enormous hotel lobby, a party of several dozen was about to leave. A coach was sitting in the courtyard, waiting to ferry them back to the airport. Their suitcases were packed. And they were fully dressed again.

Holmes took note of their expressions. And the majority were relaxed, accepting, sanguine ones. But he could see that a few individuals were looking genuinely glum.

Expelled from Eden, it occurred to the detective. Their two weeks in the sun were up. They had to go back or else find themselves out of a job, and they had no choice whatsoever in the matter.

It was a strange affair, this whole ‘vacation’ business. A complete departure from these people’s normal lives, and yet a limited and temporary one. It seemed almost cruel, to allow them so much freedom and then take it all away again.

But Holmes put such idle thoughts aside. Ruminations on the modern nature of existence were all very well, but not entirely helpful.

He had a number of mysterious deaths to solve, and needed to apply himself more resolutely to the matter.

* * *

As soon as evening started to fall and it got cool enough to take a good long walk, he did so. It was not enough simply to know about the circumstances of his own hotel. He wanted to become familiar with the entire area, Conch Bay.

There was a palm-fringed beachside promenade he walked along, which bypassed all the other hotels. He went by the Neptune and the Regency, and there were identical scenes on the terraces of each. Some vacationers were still on their recliners, either asleep or too lethargic to move. But most were packing up or gone, and the night’s festivities were beginning. Loud music had begun issuing from many of the beachfront bars, which were already filling up, their patrons ordering tall, frosted cocktails. Chatter and laughter washed over him as he passed them.

You almost never saw people as delighted and relaxed as this in the seething metropolises of America or Europe. New friendships were being made. And men’s hands were going to women’s knees in a way that was alarmingly casual.

A small group of fellows in their late twenties went past him on rollerblades, whooping like adolescents.

And there was nothing but more of the same, in this direction. So Holmes turned back the other way.

Past his own hotel, there was one more such massive establishment. And then the promenade began to rise at a gradient, curving away from the coastline.

A very warm and gentle breeze tugged at Holmes’ clothing as he climbed still higher. The light was fading very fast – the sun went down much quicker here than in more northern climes. And when he turned around, he could see the strip of lights from the hotels glistening below him, a varicoloured sparkling like a great display of precious jewels. But there was no lighting up here, and he could barely make out his surroundings.

He waited while his sight adjusted, but could only make out silhouettes. To his right was a gentle grassy slope that led down to the first hotel. But to his right …? Spiky trees and tangled bushes, a great dense mass of them, that rose still higher till they reached a rocky outcrop at the very top.

And beyond that? Holmes spent a good five minutes looking for some kind of footpath through, but in this sparse illumination he found nothing. Maybe there was none. This foliage seemed impenetrable and he had no choice but to accept that, and so he started heading down. Only to come upon a mildly curious sight, once that he was back within reach of human habitation.

There was a low, white-painted wall around the hotel next to his. And sitting on it – Holmes thought at first that she was on her own – was a slim, blonde woman in her early twenties. What was she doing here, when the activity was centred round the numerous bright bars? And then he realised that she wanted to keep a distance from all that, and not for any cheerful reason.

Her back was bowed like a woman several decades older. The moon had started coming up at the horizon, its white glow streaking the dark waves, and in it Holmes could see her tanned face was extremely mournful. She looked close to tears.

Her lips were moving. And at first the great detective thought she might be talking to herself. But then he spotted independent movement, to the rear of her. There was someone sitting on the wall beside her. A local woman, slightly squat, and in a dress of a faded dun colour, which had made her partially invisible. She was not a member of the hotel staff, because it wasn’t any kind of uniform.

Holmes stepped back into the shadows, where he’d not be spotted. Then he watched and listened.

“But what’s the point?” he could hear the tourist saying. “… no prospect of … and no one gives a damn about me.”

He couldn’t make out every word that she was saying from this distance, not with the rushing of the currents so close by.

The local woman put an arm around the tourist’s shoulder.

“Don’t be so negative,” she was advising. “Life can always change, Meg. Why not just go home and try to make the best of it?”

“You don’t know the place I come from,” Meg came back at her. “If anything there ever changed, I think most folks would die of shock. The thought of going back there, to that cramped apartment and that dead-end job …”

There was something slightly odd about the local woman, Holmes thought. He crept around a few more feet to get a better view of her. She was dressed pretty much like anyone he’d seen in Jarvistown. Except she had a large silk turban on her head. There was a great proliferation of strings of rounded beads around her neck and wrists – they appeared to be of different hues, though Holmes could not tell which ones in the darkness. And was that a white tattoo on the back of her hand? He could not be certain, and wished that he could get in closer.

“My flight’s tomorrow morning, and I’m dreading it already,” Meg was practically wailing, her voice strangled with emotion. “Please, can’t you help me?”

Her counterpart considered that for practically a minute, her rounded face screwed up with consternation. Then finally, she came to a decision and nodded.

“Me, no. But I know someone who might have the ability to solve your problem. Can you meet me again here, just before midnight?”

Meg nodded without any hesitation, rubbing at her nose and cheeks and snuffling as she did so.

And a few more scraps of conversation might have passed between the pair. But Holmes was not aware of it, since he was already circling around them and then heading back to his hotel.

* * *

A quarter of an hour before midnight, he and Captain Blessed Williams were hiding in the shadow of a nearby clump of bushes, carefully watching the spot where Holmes had overheard the conversation. They had both come armed, although their guns were tucked away in their belts. Williams’ brow furrowed in the darkness.

“This is about religion, you say?”

“In one case, figuratively. And in the other literally,” Holmes whispered back.

“But we are mostly Catholic people here.”

“You know that is not true,” Holmes admonished him. “The fact is, you are only partly Catholic. And partly something else.”

Williams’ face swung towards him, his eyes widening with dismay and a slight touch of anger. But Holmes’ only response was the vaguest smile.

“That stroll we took, earlier this afternoon, through the more ordinary parts of town – the parts few tourists ever see. What I observed was a comfortable and fairly prosperous – by Caribbean standards – neighbourhood. But something else as well. There were fetishes and symbols outside several of the doorways. Offerings too – that fruit in bowls. And I thought at first they might be signs of voodoo. But then I remembered the Spanish influence around these parts, and that made me correct my first assessment.”

His eyebrows came up like a pair of distant seagulls drawn with a thin pencil.

“It’s Santeria, isn’t it? A milder cult than purest voodoo, brought to the New World in slavery by the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and then incorporated into and hidden amongst the rituals of Catholicism. A belief in ancient gods and spirits, and the eternal presence of the human soul. I should imagine every islander believes in it a little. Even you, captain. You have a cockerel feather in your hatband, there to bring you luck.”

Williams looked slightly embarrassed. But Holmes could see, from the big man’s expression, his conclusions had been accurate.

“Okay, yes,” the captain breathed. “But there is nothing like human sacrifice in Santeria. So what is it that you are driving at?”

Then his expression altered to amazement when the great detective merely shrugged.

“I’m not quite certain, yet,” Holmes admitted.

Then his gaze swung to the painted wall.

“Hush now – the game’s afoot.”

The sad young blonde woman – this Meg – had just shown up again. By her accent from before, Holmes had already discerned that she’d be headed back to the American Midwest in a few hours’ time.

Or would she?

There was a hiss from the pathway above. The local woman in her turban – she had put in an appearance too. Meg hurried up to greet her, and they went off side by side.

They stuck to the paved section for the first few hundred yards, then struck off across open ground. Holmes and Williams followed at a careful distance, ready to drop to a crouch if either of the pair looked back.

Soon, they had reached the outer edge of Jarvistown, which told you just how small this ‘city’ was. There were a few wooden shacks, an area filled up with the rusting hulks of abandoned cars. And beyond that, a copse of conifer trees. The women disappeared inside it. And Holmes snorted quietly. He could see a fire flickering in there.

“But why would she go willingly to her own murder?” Williams asked him, keeping his voice low. “Did the other woman trick her?”

“I think not,” Holmes murmured. “But we’ll find out soon enough.”

Their pace got slower. They were entering an area where the tiniest snap of a twig, the merest rustle of the dead pine needles underfoot, might alert the others to their presence. So, despite their size, they went like cats, their every movement measured.

And, within another minute, they were staring through the tree trunks at the source of the bright orange flames.

It was a small bonfire, which illuminated the tiny clearing that the women had stopped in, drenching it in bright yellow and amber light, shadows dancing everywhere Holmes looked, so that the whole place had the semblance of being under sunlit water.

And there were more people waiting for the young blonde visitor – two other females, roughly the same age as the one who’d brought Meg here. They were both wearing silken turbans too. And – sitting cross-legged by the fire – there was a considerably older local man, in his late sixties at the very least. He had a grey, shaggy mass of hair and beard, and was dressed informally, in an old T-shirt and shorts.

All three of them were wearing many strings of coloured beads. But those adornments had been added to in a particularly curious fashion. There were symbols painted on their faces, not unlike the ones that Holmes had seen inscribed beside the township’s doorways.

The elderly man had a band around his head, with dyed feathers pushed into it. He got up with a lithe nimbleness that belied his age. And, with the three women in attendance, he proceeded to perform a ceremony, centred around the American woman.

Potions were mixed and applied to her face and shoulders. Powders were ground up and cast across her. Smoke was blown from fat cigars, and liquor half-imbibed, then spat into the fire. Names of gods were then invoked that Holmes had never heard the like of.

It culminated with the sad young woman being required to lie down on the turf beside the flames. Holmes tensed, and Blessed Williams did the same. If a knife were to be produced right now …?

Both their hands went to their guns. But the expected murder did not happen.

Meg crossed her arms atop her chest, then let her eyelids slip shut of their own accord. She became so very still that she took on the semblance of a corpse. But why, Holmes wondered, would a living person do that willingly?

The man had produced a rattle, which he proceeded to shake at the immobile woman. His chanting rose to a strange, raucous pitch.

The flames of the bonfire suddenly dropped lower. There was no physical reason for it that Holmes could make out, since there was still kindling aplenty. It was more as if a cold, damp wind had sprung up out of nowhere, slowing down the conflagration. And yet the air around them was completely still.

The shaman’s chanting abruptly stopped. He continued churning with the rattle, and crouched lower over poor young Meg. His face was twisted into one of the most saddened expressions Holmes had ever seen. And he was whispering, like he was trying to coax something out.

Meg had been utterly immobile throughout all of this, not the slightest twitch from her body. If it hadn’t been for the tanned colour in her cheeks, Holmes might have supposed she was already dead. She didn’t even flinch when the rattle was passed a mere couple of inches over her face.

The bonfire’s flames dropped lower still, and a grey dimness claimed the clearing.

Something else moved. Something just above the silent woman. It was grey itself, and filmy, and Holmes could not make out precisely what it was, at first.

But as it lifted higher, he could discern it was a head, a face.

Meg’s head. Meg’s face. But neither of them in the flesh. A ghostly copy of the features of the woman.

It opened its eyes and looked around. And smiled. The first time since he had encountered her that Holmes had seen her do that. Then the faint outline of shoulders, and then a torso, appeared. And Holmes figured out what this ritual was intended for. Meg’s immortal spirit? It was tearing itself loose from her corporeal body.

He remembered his companion, and glanced across. Captain Williams’ massive frame was trembling gently. He had lived here all his life and – surely? – had seen many peculiar events associated with the Santeria cult. But nothing quite like this. His expression was hollow.

But he had not risen to his rank by being weak of nature. So good Blessed held his nerve and plain refused to move, watching the bizarre scene like a hawk.

Half of Meg’s spirit had risen from her body, now. And that was having an effect on her corporeal being. As Holmes watched, the blood began to drain from her face. Her mouth dropped slightly open, and her head tipped slackly to one side.

Her flesh and blood … they were expiring, now that her spirit was departing them. That explained the previous deaths. There were not any homicides being committed here. This was an arcane form of self-destruction.

And Holmes believed that he could guess exactly why. But still, he could not let this pass. Meg was not even in her mid-twenties. She had her whole life stretching out before her, holding every sort of possibility, whatever she might think. And to abandon it at this stage …?

So he drew his pistol, springing to his feet and stepping inward. And was pleased to note that Captain Williams followed suit.

“Enough of this!” Holmes yelled.

Every eye in the small clearing swung to him. Even those of the spirit of blonde Meg, although the fleshy eyes below them remained closed.

“You have no right to deprive this woman of her time amongst the living, even at her own request!”

The elderly man who’d been conducting the ceremony looked alarmed for a brief instant. But he calmed down very quickly, his arms dropping to his sides. And, standing up as straight as he was able, he peered back at the detective.

“Even if she really wants it, with every single fibre of her being?” he asked Holmes in flawless English.

Holmes could see at once this was a very wise and knowledgeable man. And he swallowed with difficulty, realising the fellow had a case.

“She is not old enough to know what she wants. She is merely acting on an impulse, which, when she departs this place, will swiftly fade.”

A smile crept across the old man’s face. Not a cunning one, and not malevolent in any way, but filled with a certainty born of long experience of human nature.

“Are you sure of that, sir?” he inquired. “I know who you are, and you have a reputation as a learned fellow. So you must have read your Bible.”

Blessed Williams was looking wholly baffled, quite unsure what he was standing witness to. Assisted suicide?

The spirit of blonde Meg was still above her moveless body, staring at the two men piteously.

“Let her escape,” the old man pleaded quietly. “Let her go. To return to the kind of place the Holy Book tells us that we all came from.”

“You are a santero, I take it?” Holmes asked him. “A shaman of the Santeria cult?”

There came a shake of that grey head.

“No, sir. I am a babalewo, which is a high priest of the way. People round here call me Papa John.”

“And this service you’re performing – you’ve performed it on other occasions, yes?”

“Nine other times, to be precise. I only acquired this kind of power a year or so ago, sir. And I only use it on those outsiders who genuinely need it.”

“And how do they pay you? With cash, or by other means?” Sherlock Holmes demanded, trying to find some cause for indignation.

But once again, the man’s head shook. And his eyes became a little saddened.

“Ah, you people from beyond these shores. You always think that money is the answer. But I take no payment, Mr Holmes. These people are in pain, and I do what I’m doing out of kindness.”

And, before anyone could stop him, Papa John gave the rattle in his hand a final shake. Meg’s spirit rose up until it was utterly free of her body, and then vanished.

Her supine form looked no different to the way it had before. But Holmes could tell that it was dead.

He let his gun hand drop exhaustedly, then tucked the piece away. A strange feeling like vertigo had overtaken him. His face had become moist, and he mopped at it with his free hand.

It had never been the case before – not once in his entire extended life – that he had let a frail young woman die, and not been able to do anything about it.

But he saw the broader picture. And he took a while composing himself, but he finally looked across at Papa John again, his features unnaturally slackened.

“Show me where you send them,” he asked quietly. “Show me where they go.”

* * *

It was the paved pathway again, the higher slope of it. It was the impenetrable undergrowth Holmes had observed, reaching upward to that rocky promontory.

“There’s no way through here!” Blessed Williams protested.

But the policeman was wrong.

Papa John had brought along his rattle. Closed his eyes and shook it now, and started muttering phrases in a strangled Spanish dialect.

A cold wind blew up out of nowhere, coming up from directly behind them and then passing through the dense, dark foliage. And parting it, enough that Holmes could see in the moonlight that there actually was a very narrow path.

“Only my ancestors know of this route,” the elderly high priest assured him.

They had left the trio of local woman far behind them by this stage.

Papa John – he led the way. Holmes and Williams followed cautiously. It was a very tortuous, very winding path, so narrow in places that their clothes were snagged on thorny bushes, and they had to struggle to break free. And so their progress was extremely slow.

It was long after midnight by the time they’d reached the uppermost point of the outcrop. They stood in silhouette against the fully risen moon. The great detective and his companion stared down.

Below them, past a near vertical slope, there was a crescent of white sand against the dim and lapping ocean. A little shore, enclosed on three sides by vertiginous cliffs and on the fourth side by the water. It was empty, not the slightest sign of life. The only things that moved there were the waves that kissed the tideline.

“I didn’t even know there was a beach here,” Williams protested, still panting from the journey up.

“But you could see it from a boat,” Holmes pointed out. “Unless … the whole place is enchanted.”

At which, Papa John smiled quietly again.

“And now what do we do?” the captain asked.

“Now we climb down.”

It took them over another hour to do so. And they might not have managed it at all, had Papa John not shown them the way. He knew the correct route, avoiding those sections that were too steep and flattened, directing them to the correct handholds and the narrow ledges where they were able to pause and rest.

Holmes and Williams were drenched with sweat, their limbs shaking with tiredness all the same, by the time they reached the white strand at the bottom. Except that the detective noted Papa John was not the least bit out of breath.

Blessed Williams doubled over, placing his huge hands on his knees, then coughing.

“Okay. Now we’re here, what happens?” he asked once he’d found the strength.

Holmes thought that he knew the answer. And he indicated the moon, which had dropped down low against the water.

“We wait for the sunrise,” he explained. He looked across to Papa John, who nodded. “Nothing much will happen until then.”

He found a wide, low boulder, sat down upon it, and then encouraged the police captain to do the same.

“I still don’t get it,” Blessed Williams breathed. “What is going to change here, once the sun is up?”

“It was once worshipped,” Holmes told him. “And in a sense, still is. Those people in the hotels that we’ve left behind, don’t they do precisely that thing?”

Williams became very quiet and thoughtful, starting to see where this might be leading.

“I mentioned religion before,” Holmes went on. “But I only explained the part that Santeria played in this. The other aspect of this case is outlined in the Book of Genesis. The tale of Adam and Eve, and how they were expelled from the Garden.”

Williams’ own eyebrows came up surprisedly, and Holmes took that as his cue to continue.

“People in this modern age? Even though they do not realise it, they manage to play out a similar scenario. For a couple of weeks of every year, they leave their normal lives behind and visit places like this. Here, they revert to a primordial state. They go about near naked under the hot sun, and laugh and play the same way they once did when they were small.

“But as it was for Adam and Eve, so it is for them. An end comes to their frolicking. The realities of everyday existence resume their hold, and these same people must return to colder climes, cluttered cities, heavy working days and pressured lives. They have spent a while in Eden, only to be cast out from it, back into the harsher world beyond.”

“But … they know that when they first arrive,” Captain Williams pointed out.

“Indeed, most do. They have their fun and then accept their fate. But for a few – like Meg, for instance – the thought of expulsion from this paradise becomes unbearable. I listened to her, you see. She had nothing to return to. No one to care for her, and no prospect of improvement in her dismal life. She wanted to remain here more than anything in the whole world. And so – since her own life was worth nothing to her – she forfeited that to do it.”

That shocked Williams so profoundly that he fell completely silent.

* * *

A while later, there was a faint glimmer of yellow at the far horizon. It expanded till the surface of the sea ahead of them was filled with flecks of gold. Holmes looked around him as the light increased, and took in the fact that this was the most beautiful bay he’d ever come across. The sand was so white it was almost platinum, and utterly unblemished. There were long masses of creeping plants on sections of the cliffs that they had climbed down, and flowers of wondrous hues were on them, opening to greet the rising sun. He could even make out, at the far end of the strand, a little waterfall emerging from the higher rocks and sparkling like crystal.

Small birds began to wheel above them as the air increased in warmth. And a huge tropical butterfly went past, its wings containing all the colours of the rainbow.

“Not long now,” Papa John murmured, moving up closer and grinning with satisfaction.

And then the sun was pushing up above the Caribbean waves, a great overturned golden bowl, the gentler pre-dawn warmth retreating before the full heat of the coming day. Holmes felt the sunlight wash across his body. And was forced once again, for a brief moment, to close his eyes.

He thought he heard a distant laugh.

When he looked around, he could see pale figures emerging from the thin air just in front of the cliff-face.

Nine figures. Four men and five women, all of them in scanty swimsuits. None of them was what you’d call particularly substantial – you could see right through them, since their bodies were like living smoke. But they were grinning hugely, and began cavorting as soon as they had emerged. One of the men performed a cartwheel on the sand, and several of the women giggled and applauded.

And then Meg appeared, dressed in a bikini, an enormously delighted smile on her thin face. She started running, going past the others, down into the water, where she shrieked with wild abandonment.

She made not the slightest splash or ripple. And had left no footprints on the shore.

But this was what she’d wanted. So Holmes pondered it a while, and then decided he was happy for her.

THE TERROR IN THE PARK

The corpse had been lying at the centre of the park most of the night, and had only been discovered come the rise of dawn. A gardener had come across it. It was lying in the same position where it had been found, sprawled out on the neatly trimmed sward like a squashed insect at the middle of the green baize of a snooker table.

The area had been taped off. Crowds had gathered beyond the barriers, uniformed men holding them back.

The city’s top detectives – and their famous guest – paced around the body while forensics people worked.

“Do you suppose that this could be,” Inspector Penchit suggested, “the work of some gigantic hound?”

“Good Lord, I do hope not,” muttered Holmes. “I’ve had enough of those to last me several lifetimes.”

Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia’s capital – boiled around them in the stewing heat. This might be one of the most humid cities on the face of this planet, but it was also one of the most vibrant. It was a boomtown, driven by oil and financial institutions. Here in the middle – and this was Kuala Lumpur Central Park – skyscrapers were springing up like mushrooms on a balmy night. Most of them were office blocks, but some of them were homes – ‘56 new apartments’, a nearby billboard announced proudly beside one such a half-built structure, ‘57 swimming pools’.

This was where the new rich were carving their fortunes. An entire Far Eastern young upwardly mobile class was coming into being. Traffic thrummed across the elevated freeways and the sidewalks and the malls were thronged.

This was also one of the most genuinely multicultural venues to be found anywhere, and had been so for centuries. There were dozens of nationalities living here; Christians and Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists all rubbed shoulders amicably. Everywhere that you went, there were churches, mosques and temples.

An example to us all, Holmes thought. And then he returned his attention to the corpse in question.

It was a young Chinese fellow, barely in his twenties. He had been formally dressed for work, but was now in his shirtsleeves, the jacket of his business suit lying a few yards away. Which suggested that he had recently completed his labours when he’d emerged, and yanked the jacket off. Then dropped it in the course of the pursuit which had terminated with the ending of his life.

Whatever had come down on him, it had been moving fast or else had taken him by surprise. Otherwise, there would be more than a few yards between corpse and jacket.

And it did not look like he had been attacked by any dog. There were heavy rows of tooth marks around his neck, for sure, the fellow’s blood coagulating in them. But they were all shallow, none of the wounds suggesting something canine. If anything, the man looked as if he’d been gone at with a pair of blunted hacksaws.

For one gruesome final detail, his neck had been snapped.

“Background information, if you please?” Holmes asked.

Inspector Penchit – in his fifties, grey-haired and with spectacles – looked perturbed for a moment, then figured out what was being required of him.

“His name is Cedric Lam,” he told the great detective. “He is from Taiwan originally. Twenty-two, unmarried. He worked for an international bank, over there.”

And he pointed to the building that was obviously the wonder of this entire city. And one of the wonders of the entire modern world: the Petronas Towers, at the north-western end of the park – two of them, a full one thousand, four hundred and eighty three feet tall, all glass and silvery metal, tapering to Arabic-style crenellated turrets at their peaks. It would have been enough in itself, but that was not all. Between the pair of upright structures was a kind of crossbar called ‘the skybridge’, a covered passageway joining them both, so that the entire double building formed a massive ‘H’ against the sky. What kept it up? Holmes had wondered when he had first seen it. Ah, the engineering miracles of this modern age beat even the achievements of his own.

“He was working late, as is the custom of such institutions,” Penchit was continuing. “He finished about ten o’clock. We have witnesses, the building’s doormen, who saw him leave, and video footage. And that was the last that we know of him … alive.”

“He was going home?” Holmes asked.

“He would have had to cross the park to do so. So, yes, we believe that is the case.”

Holmes held it in his mind’s eye for a moment. The young, ambitious fellow, grateful that another day’s hard toil was at its end. Stepping out into the open air and pulling off his jacket. Mopping at his brow perhaps, before heading away toward his apartment.

And then … this awful thing descending on him, finishing a life that had barely begun its adult phase. Holmes felt indignation boiling up in him. This had to be stopped, before it happened again.

All of this, however, was internal. He showed not a fragment of it to his colleagues around him, maintaining instead his calm, lofty demeanour.

“Is the man’s employer here?” was his next question.

A Muslim in a very smart black suit stepped forwards, introducing himself as Mr Inmarahan of the Global Oriental Bank. He was in his late forties, had a wide salt-and-pepper moustache, and handed Holmes a business card, which the detective placed in his back pocket without looking at.

“It’s a great honour to meet you, sir. Fame of your achievements is worldwide.”

“I’m sure,” Holmes acknowledged. “Is it possible to see the place the victim worked?”

Soon, they were riding up to the twenty-fifth floor of Tower Two.

“Cedric was a fast-track inductee,” Mr Inmarahan was explaining. “We take on some fifty of them every year, choosing only the very best and brightest of the output of this region’s colleges.”

“A recruitment programme, then,” Holmes said. “And how long does the probationary period last?”

“A year,” his host answered factually. “After which time, we select the ten who have prevailed above the others.”

And Holmes simply said, “Ah.”

Cogs were already turning quickly in his mind. He decided to keep his suspicions from the others for the moment. But he already had motive.

The elevator doors slid open onto white walls, fluorescent light, and bustle. There were rows of small desks with computer screens. Every single one of them was occupied by a young man or woman, simultaneously tapping at a keyboard and conversing on a telephone.

The place sounded like Babel running backwards with an a capella soundtrack by the Yoko Ono Band.

“Here?” Holmes ventured.

“No. We keep the inductees in a separate office. It makes them find their own feet, rather than learning from the others.”

Business practices in the Far East were thoroughly stringent, Holmes reflected. But then, when you considered the rewards … 56 new apartments, 57 swimming pools. Which meant that every home had a pool out on its terrace, and there was a larger central one. And this within a general section of the globe where deprivation, even poverty, was frequently the norm. It defied imagination.

He was led through to another office which was much the same, but had only fifty desks, and the occupants of them looked even more harassed. Holmes could smell something as soon as he walked in – and it was desperation. Hair was mussed by anxious fingers. Eyeballs were bloodshot, and he could see a great proliferation of chewed fingernails. And none of these hopeful folk had been a year out of college yet.

“How far are they into the programme?” Holmes inquired gently.

“Just two months.”

Ten more to go, then. At the end of which, only one in five of them would apply for a mortgage on an apartment with a swimming pool on its own terrace. The rest would be discarded. People had killed for considerably less.

“You must evaluate them regularly?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And how was Cedric faring?”

“He was one of the very finest.”

“Naturally.”

Holmes began to stroll behind the desks. Barely a face looked around at him. Barely a marbled eye took in his presence. When one did, it squinted momentarily, and then looked angry with itself, diverted from the task in hand.

Finally, he reached an empty chair. The screen was filled with financial charts. And there was a pair of headphones lying beside it. Perhaps this computer not only displayed but spoke its information. And why would that be?

He touched the keyboard, noticing that there was something unusual about it too. Then his gaze went to a little dish beside it, filled up with what he thought at first was coloured candy. But it was no such thing.

“These are considered a delicacy in the Far East, are they not?” Holmes grimaced.

“Indeed,” replied Mr Inmarahan.

“And the owner of the desk?”

“He must be on a bathroom break. The fellow is an example to us all. Young Mr Suvu.”

“Mr Sulu?” Holmes blurted.

But it turned out not to be the case.

Abil Suvu was from the eastern provinces of this emergent nation. He had done remarkably with his exam results, in spite of almost insurmountable personal difficulties. An accident in childhood – some manner of conflagration in his home – had damaged his hands and left him blinded. Which explained the Braille keyboard that Holmes had already noticed, and the speaking device.

But he had battled against those handicaps, and done so well for himself he had finished up with a job here, albeit a probationary one like all the others.

“Ah, but here he comes,” said Mr Inmarahan almost delightedly.

There was the tapping of a white cane. There was the fumbling shuffle of a man whose sight had left him. Mr Abil Suvu looked no different to the other inductees in this room, except that he had large wrap-around dark glasses on, and a pair of white gloves.

His employer introduced them. Mr Suvu looked astonished when he learned who he was stood in front of. He extended his right hand. Holmes reached for it, and then dropped his grasp momentarily before their palms connected.

Suvu completed the handshake nonetheless.

“It is such a pleasure to meet you, sir.” His tone was sibilant and strangely accented. He was most definitely not from around here. “Ah, that I could see the world through your eyes, and be able to notice things the way that you do.”

“Maybe you shall, one day,” Holmes answered.

It was such an enigmatic remark that everybody around him looked puzzled. Holmes ignored it, walking to a nearby window, gazing at the thriving city down below. Inmarahan had followed him.

“Can I ask something more of you?” the detective inquired.

“But of course.”

“A list. Of your five top-scoring inductees.”

If his host was renewedly mystified, he did not let it show.

“And photographs of each of them, for the purposes of identification.”

“Yes, right away. Anything else?”

“You have a car park for your employees, I take it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I’d like to have a look at it.”

* * *

Each of the ranked vehicles had a cardboard pass in its windshield, identifying the driver as a Global Oriental employee. Holmes marched down past them until he came to a Toyota people carrier.

He stared at the name on the cardboard pass. “How is he able to drive?” he wondered out loud.

“I believe that someone from his building ferries him back and forth on a daily basis. The other man has a job nearby.”

“Does the owner of this vehicle have a family, children?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“I see,” Holmes muttered. And in which case, why such a large vehicle? He took note of the fact that only the front two seats were upright. All the rest were folded flat.

The great detective turned his attention back to Penchit, who had been quietly shadowing him this entire while.

“And what should we do now, Mr Holmes?” the inspector asked.

“We make sure that we are armed. We wait until nightfall.”

Holmes paused, smiling to himself.

“And then we wait some more.”

* * *

There were restaurants to one side of the Central Park with partially open sections, fans turning in the awnings above them. And the evening was thickening by the time they were ready. People strolled past on the way from work. Holmes and Penchit were sitting at a table with a clear view of the towers, whose illumination had come on by this hour. The colossal glass and metal ‘H’ shone luminously against the dusky skyline.

Utterly magnificent, Holmes thought. He could not find the words to properly describe the sight – it would take a Nobel Laureate of the powers of Kipling to do that. For all its faults, this modern age he’d found himself in really did produce some breathtaking, heart-stopping spectacles.

He sipped at the pina colada he’d ordered before his meal. One of the Glocks that he had purchased in America was snuggled underneath his jacket, and he knew that the inspector was similarly armed, as were several plain-clothed men at adjoining tables. There were five of them in total. Any more than that and the culprit might take notice, and then flight.

They ate a leisurely dinner, the great detective displaying not the slightest hint of nerves. The food was excellent, the service flawless. The purple of evening succumbed to the deep blue of night. The enormous ‘H’ continued to burn above them, defying gravity and even imagination.

There were still people about. These restaurants were well-patronised, and there were several large hotels nearby, tourists wandering the neat tracks of the parkland.

Holmes had set out on the table the five photographs that Mr Inmarahan had given him. He had to wait till nine thirty before he took the first one off.

A young woman called Amy Ling. She emerged from the doorway of Tower Two, turned and strolled away with no harm coming to her. There were still too many witnesses about.

But by ten thirty, two more photographs had been removed, and the traffic in the park was a good deal sparser. There were no other remaining diners by this juncture. The seating around them was bare. The tables had been cleared and all the staff had gone inside.

Holmes had taken on a pensive air. Inspector Penchit glanced at him worriedly.

“Only two left. Are you sure it must be one of them?”

“The next prospective victim? Almost assuredly.”

“The motive for murder is professional jealousy, then? Thinning down the ranks of the top-scoring newcomers, to give the culprit a better chance at lasting the course.”

Holmes smiled gently. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“And you have someone in mind?”

“‘Someone’ is for later,” the detective told the freshly bewildered policeman. “What we’re looking, for at this moment, is better called ‘something’.”

And then his head came up. Another of the inductees had emerged from the building. Another woman, Mai Chencup. She had become the highest scoring of the people in the fast-track office, and when she started heading out across the grass, Holmes could see that there was not a single other person near her.

He stiffened, an instinct fastening itself around his bones.

And then looked upward, pointing with his gaze for the inspector’s benefit.

“There!”

Penchit squinted. “Mr Holmes? What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Tower Two, and yet not the tower,” Holmes said dryly. “Quick, man, look again!”

The inspector peered harder, and then let out an astonished gasp. And who would not? Part of the wall of the tower appeared to be suddenly bulging. Appeared to be moving. And how in the name of all the gods could that be possible?

It was a few storeys below the skybridge. But as Penchit watched, it appeared to accelerate. He still couldn’t make out its proper shape – it was too much a part of the structure it was moving down. But it scuttled down the tower with a determined fluidity that was almost sickening to watch. There was no doubt of this thing’s intention, whatever it might be. It was a predator, now closing on its prey. And fast!

Poor Miss Mai had noticed nothing. She was ambling out across the green turf, one hand rubbing gently at her brow. Glad another day of frantic toil was over. Grateful for the open air and solitude. And if she had been truly alone in this park, how quickly would she have come to regret those facts?

The camouflaged shape reached the bottom. Penchit thought that its true form might finally be revealed. But then he got another shock. As soon as it departed from the building, it no longer took the structure’s colouration. Instead, it turned a partially fragmented green, exactly the same colour as the grass.

And it continued forwards.

It was making no sound he could hear. But a sudden reptilian must have grasped Mai Chencup. She abruptly stopped and looked over her shoulder. And when she saw that a whole section of the verdant turf had risen up and was pursuing her, she let out a horrified wail and started running although, it had to be admitted, not nearly fast enough.

At which point, Sherlock Holmes bellowed, “Now!”

He sprang to his feet, drawing his pistol. The inspector and the other police people followed suit. And now the Englishman was leading the charge, rushing forwards, dragging the others along with him. He began firing at the baffling shape, and he was not the only one.

It halted its pursuit of the unfortunate woman. The thing seemed to throw its head back, and it wailed. The sound was so piercing it almost wounded Penchit’s ears. What was this apparition?

Sherlock Holmes, apparently, had no time for such questions. He was still going forward, firing another shot with every step he took. His Glock had an extended magazine, so there were plenty of them. One 9mm round after another plunged into its target, as did the ammunition of the plain-clothed men and women around him.

The creature still fought death for quite a while. It thrashed and hollered, then it shivered and it twitched. By the time it finally lay still, more than half an imperial pound of lead must have gone into it.

Mai Chencup had fallen to her knees and was crying hysterically, the pursuit by this mysterious beast and then the cacophony of gunfire overwhelming her. Holmes walked over to her, offering her his hand. And when she took it, getting to her feet, he wrapped an arm around her, hugging her in a paternal, comforting fashion.

“You’re quite safe now, madam,” Penchit heard him say. “One of the monsters is gone. The other will not last.”

One of …?

He still had not the slightest idea what was going on.

The great detective looked at him across the woman’s shoulder, then inclined his chin in the dead creature’s direction, inviting him to take a closer look.

Penchit walked across to it cautiously. Now that it was done for, the beast had lost most of its ability to conceal its true nature. Its proper shape – a muddy brown hue – stood out obviously on the grass. When Penchit looked to one side again, Holmes had joined him.

“Not a gigantic hound at all,” the inspector breathed. “A gigantic lizard.”

“Exactly,” Holmes nodded. “The most famous – naturally – is the chameleon. But there are several more species of reptilian that are capable of taking on the appearance of their surroundings. It must have been lurking underneath the crosswalk section,” and he lifted his gaze again, “for a couple of days.”

“But you said two monsters. So there is another?”

Sherlock Holmes became tight-tipped.

“Not like this one. Something else. This is the monster that performed the actual killing. But the worst one by far is the monster that controlled it.”

* * *

Acting on the great detective’s instructions, Penchit had the whole fast-track team assembled by nine the next morning. They were in the same room he had first encountered them, except their computers and telephones were all switched off. They were sitting quietly at their desks. Miss Chencup was not amongst them, since she was quite obviously not a suspect. But the rest of the young forty-nine were here.

Holmes was not, which genuinely surprised him. Penchit had entered the vast building to be informed that the detective had not shown up as yet. As advised, he had brought several uniformed officers with him, who were standing beside the room’s only doorway in or out.

And when Holmes finally arrived, the inspector got another mild surprise. The man was dressed the same way he’d been yesterday. And yet he’d added to his garb an intriguing item – a large black backpack, filled to its entire capacity. Penchit’s eyebrows lifted when he saw that. He had never imagined that such a legend as Sherlock Holmes would wear such a commonplace and mundane thing. Had the Englishman been out touring the city sights this morning?

“Ladies, gentlemen,” Holmes announced to the gathered, waiting people, “I know that you all want to get back to work, so I’ll not keep you long. But I feel that this is the appropriate time for … a history lesson.”

“Yes,” he continued, ignoring the shocked glances that were cast in his direction, “every nation has its history, which in part defines it. Mine does, and so does yours.

“Kuala Lumpur prides itself on being an extremely modern place, and so it should. You have succeeded, in a few decades, in lifting yourself out of the undeveloped murk of the Third World and transforming this place into a New World city. It is a remarkable achievement, and I heartily applaud it. But the past, like an old scar gained in childhood, cannot easily be left behind.”

He was pacing slowly past the desks as he was speaking, the gaze of every occupant fixed on him uncertainly.

“You think of yourselves, these days, as Christians, Buddhists, Moslems and Hindus. And perhaps some of you are none of those things, but agnostics or deniers. But before such beliefs, there were far earlier ones, thoroughly more primitive. Some of which still exist to this very day.”

He swept an arm out in the general direction of the Great Unknown.

“Beyond these gleaming towers, out beyond these crowded streets, there are vast areas of jungle that have never felt civilisation’s touch. Deep and tangled, foetid places that a clean ray of sunlight barely ever touches. Murky and mysterious places which know nothing of modernity at all. Yet in these places, some people still dwell. They are the ancient tribes.

“These people know nothing of either modernism or monotheism. Names like Jesus and Siddartha, if they ever heard them, would be meaningless sounds tapping on their eardrums. No, their take on the divine is far more primitive that that. They are pagans. And to be more specific, many of their beliefs are animistic.”

He paused, seeing that many of his audience were not familiar with the word.

“They believe that creatures have a soul, and in some cases a godly one. Certain creatures become sacred to these misbegotten folk – they come to worship them. A great snake, perhaps. Or a slinking panther living in a nearby cave. Or else, some enormous breed of lizard science has no knowledge of as yet. These childlike tribespeople worship such beasts devoutly. Pray to them, make sacrifices to them. Kneel down and are humble in their presence. And in the course of time – this is not merely my belief, since I have seen it demonstrated – if enough centuries pass, a connection is made between the worshipped and the worshipper. The latter might take on, for instance, some of the physical aspects of the object of its devotion. How, I do not know. Perhaps by some ghastly osmosis, or even crossbreeding of some heinous type. And it is not unknown for the two parties to communicate, either by some secret language or by telepathic means.”

When he saw how shocked the young workers were looking, Holmes smiled bitterly.

“It may all sound fantastic, and yet we had proof of it last night. What I and my colleagues brought down might have been a quite extraordinary reptile, yes. But it was still merely a reptile. It had not the wit, on its own, to specifically target and then murder Cedric Lam. Neither had it the wit, on its own, to go after Miss Chencup. Someone here instructed the beast to do it. Somebody in this room is a descendant of one of those ancient tribes, and brought the lizard here into the city and then let it loose.”

Horrified gasps went up from the audience. A few of the young women put their fingers to their mouths.

Holmes looked around at them all with a steely gaze.

“In this building’s parking lot is a Toyota people carrier, its back seats folded down. It is the vehicle that was used to transport the creature from the jungle to the very heart of Kuala Lumpur. There is still mud on its axles.”

His pace was becoming even slower, now, the direction of his movements condensing in one direction.

“Then, there is the matter of dietary habits. I thought them, when I first noticed them, to be gaily-coloured sweets. But candied locusts are a delicacy in this part of the world – I remarked as much to your supervisor only yesterday. Yes, a delicacy. An occasional treat. But somebody here seems to eat them every day.”

At his desk, the blind and disabled Mr Abil Suvu had stiffened, becoming very still. The Englishman was walking closer to him.

“A fire during childhood, at your home. I believe that is supposed to be the cause of your afflictions?” Holmes asked. “But tell me, what kind of fire is it that damages the hands and blinds the eyes, yet leaves the whole remainder of the face untouched?”

He stopped in front of Suvu, bending slightly down.

“When I went to shake your hand yesterday, I dropped my own palm slightly before we made contact. And yet you grasped it truly, and your grip was firm. Your hands are not damaged, and you are not blind. And so, what are you?”

The great detective’s arm lunged forward, and he snatched the dark glasses off Mr Suvu’s face.

Then, even he reeled back.

Yells and screams resounded through the office. Between one instant and the next, everyone was jumping from their desks and trying to put some distance between themselves and the thing Holmes had revealed.

Mr Suvu’s face might be normal. But the eyes were very definitely not. They were not human eyes, were very small and round and red, and stood out from the man’s face on a pair of scaly turrets that moved independently of each other.

They were, in fact, lizard’s eyes.

Some of the young female inductees were wailing uncontrollably, forcing their way out past the uniformed men at the door. Who in their turn looked confounded, almost stunned, and had forgotten their duties altogether.

Suvu took advantage of that. He hissed, and his tongue came flicking out. Then he surged forward exactly in the same way that the lizard of the night before had done. He rammed Holmes aside, went scuttling past the uniformed men – who sprang away from him – and was out into the corridor.

Holmes was after him in a flash. He could hear the policemen behind him recover their wits and join in the pursuit, but that was academic now. This semi-man was moving very fast. And as he ran, he seemed to be pulling both his gloves off.

There were several loud explosions behind Holmes, and he felt bullets whizzing past his shoulders. Several of the uniformed men, afraid that the miscreant would get away, had obviously opened fire. He could hear Penchit telling them to stop, but too late, since the act was done.

None of the shots hit Suvu. But the end of this corridor terminated with a sheet of plate glass, a massive window looking out across the town. And it shattered.

Suvu had kicked off both of his shoes too. He’d been wearing loafers – there were no socks underneath.

He reached the shattered glass. Stretched his arms out past the new-formed opening. Attached his fingertips to the side of the building. And pulling himself up, disappeared from view.

He was climbing the outside of the Tower Two with no visible form of support. His hands and feet had to have suckers on them, just like the lizard they had killed a night.

Holmes should have paused, but he’d been expecting something of this nature. And so he continued on.

Penchit ground to an astounded halt, watching the man do that. Why was he not stopping? There was a twenty-five storey drop below that shattered window, and no possible way of pursuing the culprit.

His astonishment turned to horror, though, when he saw what Holmes did next.

Holmes reached the opening in a few more strides.

And then flung himself through it, into thin air.

At the same moment, he yanked at a strap depending from the backpack he was wearing. It was some kind of ripcord, Penchit presumed. There was a parachute in there – so the man was not suicidal.

But a parachute would only carry him downwards, whereas the murderer was headed up.

And then Penchit’s mouth dropped so wide open, if you saw it you’d believe that it would never close again.

It was no great swath of fabric that came sailing from the backpack. It was silvery instead, and blossomed instantly into a massive inverse onion shape.

“Good heavens!” the inspector gasped. “It is some kind of … helium-filled balloon!”

No sooner had those words left his lips than the great detective disappeared from view. And like the culprit, he was heading upward.

* * *

The city lurched and swayed underneath Holmes. Kuala Lumpur Central Park was reduced to a postage stamp. There was a slight feeling of nausea in his gut, but otherwise it was a perfectly exhilarating sensation. He was brother to the bird up here. The passing breezes were his friends. He looked down, could see Penchit’s glasses winking up at him. Then he moved his attention higher.

Suvu was no longer visible. He might have travelled around to the far side of the tower, but Holmes thought not. Above him was the crossbar section that linked the two towers. And that was the natural place for such a creature to seek refuge.

The helium balloon tugged at him, carrying him higher. Within less than a minute, he was level with the skybridge. But not over it. This contraption he had cobbled up could not be steered, but Holmes had already considered that.

From underneath his jacket, he produced a different kind of pistol to the one that he had brandished yesterday evening. It was smaller, lighter, spring-loaded, and its ammunition was not bullets but a short pole with a rubber plunger at the top. He aimed and fired. There was a sharp snapping noise as the spring inside uncoiled. The plunger slammed into the roof and stayed there, held by suction. A length of sturdy yarn stretched from it, all the way back to the gun.

And using that, Holmes towed himself along till he’d reached terra firma, or what counted for it way up here. This was the forty-second storey of the building, he already knew. He slipped the backpack from his shoulders and the silver balloon went spiralling away.

Holmes stared around, his instincts baffled. There was still no sign of Suvu, so could he be wrong? He walked as close as he was able to the edge, but then, finding nothing there, turned the other way.

When he heard the sudden scuttling behind him, the detective realised his mistake … too late! The culprit had been off in that direction after all. He had been simply clinging out of sight much further down the wall of the skybridge, still defying gravity.

Holmes tried to wheel around again, but there was not the time. He felt elbows slam against his shoulder blades. The impact sent him sprawling.

Suvu was all over him next instant, those adhesive fingers clawing at his face. It felt to Holmes like they were trying to rip the very flesh from his skull. He tried to struggle back, but was at a massive disadvantage.

And then the man had an arm around his windpipe, and was trying to choke him.

And all the time, he was hollering, “You killed my god! Now I can never go back to my people!”

Holmes felt himself beginning to black out. The man was preternaturally strong. He tried to slam one of his own elbows into the fellow’s face, but Suvu was too fast for that.

The rubber plunger was nearby, with the length of yarn and the pistol still dangling from it. The detective had a thought. He’d not needed to use it, but there was a winding mechanism fitted inside the device, in case he’d not had the ability to employ both his hands. It would have reeled him in if he was unable to do that by himself, in other words. But Holmes could see that it might have another use.

He reached out and detached the plunger. Then he twisted around as far as he was able, and slammed it over one of Suvu’s bulging reptilian eyes. It attached itself with a sucking sound. The murderer wailed, more out of fright than pain, and began clawing at it, trying to get it off.

His grip on Holmes loosened.

And the great detective took full advantage of that, getting both of his hands free and making a loop from the length of yarn.

He slipped that around Suvu’s neck

And then he engaged the winding mechanism.

Which immediately began to draw the cord in, throttling the man. He let go of Holmes completely and went staggering back, clawing at the pressure round his throat, his whole face turning purple.

Holmes was able to roll over on his side and draw in a few gulps of oxygen. Then he lifted himself on his arms, to watch what he supposed would be the murderer’s demise.

He had not counted on the man’s unnatural strength. Suvu was part lizard, and wild creatures – even those kind – are far stronger proportionally than humans.

He managed to get several narrow fingers underneath the cord. And tugged at it until it broke.

An awful rattling noise emerged from his larynx. A normal human being might have fallen to his knees. But Suvu’s reserves were extraordinary. Almost as soon as he had worked himself loose, he charged at Holmes again.

The great detective – among other things in his very long lifetime – had trained with the monks of a Shaolin temple for a while. And knew from them that you did not need to be standing to put up a fight. This roof that he was sprawled out on was good and smooth.

Holmes powered himself forward with his arms, meeting the attack full on. And as soon as Suvu was in range, he drew a knee back, and then slammed his foot as hard as he could into the villain’s chest.

The impact lifted Suvu up into the air.

And they were so close to the precipice that when he started falling again … there was no edge left.

Holmes watched and listened sombrely until the dwindling, howling figure disappeared from view. He only looked around again when he heard his own name being called.

Inspector Penchit and his uniformed men had reached this level, had prised open another window and were calling to him, gesturing. The great detective took a last glance down, then clambered to his feet and walked calmly towards them.

“That is it, then?” Penchit asked, helping his guest inside.

“He chose the wrong lizard to worship,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “If he’d opted instead for draco indochinensis, the Southeast Asian Arboreal Flying Lizard, then he might have survived.”

It was intended as a joke. He did not often make them, and felt faintly peeved when no one smiled.

“We saw the whole thing. Did I hear it right? Was Suvu actually shouting out that he could never go back to his people?”

“It was the kind of thing that people say in moments of inflamed emotion, since the truth is that he never wanted to. He wished to live as a normal human being, albeit a wealthy one.”

“But for how long could that even have been possible?” Penchit hissed. “I mean, he managed to fool his employers for a couple of months, but a whole lifetime? He must have known that eventually the truth would have come out.”

“We all carry strange yearnings in us,” Holmes sighed, “many of them utterly improbable.”

THE VANISHED

“The bodies disappeared, you say?”

“That’s right, sir. They were examined at the scene, then tagged and bagged and loaded into the coroner’s wagon. Except, when they reached the other end, the body bags were empty. Both corpses had vanished.”

Lieutenant Alden Greaves was a tall, thin man with silver at his temples and a rather dry and pensive manner. He had the slightly irritating habit, too, of clucking his tongue whenever he was thinking, and he did so now.

“Do you have photographs, at least?” Holmes asked.

“Of course.”

Greaves handed them over and Holmes inspected them. They’d not win prizes in any competition of the art. But they were perfectly clear representations of a man and a woman in their mid-twenties, lying sprawled out across the same small grassy area on which both detectives were now standing.

The deceased pair in the pictures could have been brother and sister. They both looked to be about the same height and build, and had healthy frames, suggesting they had exercised regularly. They were handsome in a rather artificial way, almost as if they’d been subjected to plastic surgery – at that age? And they both had short blond – practically golden – hair.

There was no damage to either of them that Holmes could make out. But both of them had their eyes closed, and their limbs were splayed at uncomfortable angles. And, presumably, they hadn’t moved a muscle the whole while the homicide squad and the forensics team had been at work around them. Not even when the coroner had thrust the hollow tip of his thermometer into their livers.

“Well, they certainly look dead,” the great detective grunted.

The lighted hills of San Francisco stretched away around him. Chinatown was filled with coloured neon, and the bay out past it glittered in the night. There was a touch of mistiness to the air which suggested that a thicker fog was on its way. Holmes’ gaze hovered for a short while on the famous bridges, before returning to the area around him.

They were at the very summit of Nob Hill, outside the high walls of one of its few remaining mansions. This one, in fact, belonged to Joel McMartin, founder and proprietor of a supermarket newssheet called the International Inquisitor. And Holmes had come across this particular rag several times during his travels across the United States.

It was the kind of publication he could scarcely believe anyone would purchase, and yet it sold by the million, every week. The ‘news’ stories it carried were scarcely deserving of that name. There were lurid tales of scandal centred round this nation’s thousands of celebrities. Allegations of satanic ritual in its quiet and pleasant suburbs. Photographs of flying saucers and two-headed babies, obviously doctored. True confessions of the most bizarre, appalling nature.

Back in his day, Holmes had considered the crude fiction of the ‘penny dreadfuls’ bad enough. But … some people believed this claptrap?

Apparently so, because he’d already taken a glance at this mansion through the gates when he had first arrived, and it was enormous and splendid. There were a Rolls Royce and several Italian sports cars parked out on the forecourt.

The people from the north of his own country had been right when they said, ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass.’ It meant ‘where there’s trash, there’s money.’ And here was the clear evidence of that.

The surrounding walls were at least ten feet tall. And there were clear signs, scuffmarks and such, that the pair had been attempting to scale it.

But for what purpose? What could they possibly hope to have achieved? No weapons had been found on them. No implements of any kind. McMartin, his wife and their one child had been inside the mansion at the time of the event, certainly. But the place had four security staff, all of them armed and one of them handling a German Shepherd. So if this pair had intended doing any harm, they’d not have got too far.

“You’ve no slightest idea who they were?” Holmes asked.

Greaves clucked his tongue again.

“Not so much as a tram ticket was found on either of them, much less any serious kind of identification. In fact, Mr Holmes, their pockets were completely empty.”

Holmes glanced back at the small wad of photos. Both of the would-be intruders were identically dressed in dark, casual, lightweight-looking suits.

“That’s unusual in itself, in this day and age,” he pointed out

He rummaged through one of his own pockets to prove the point. There were coins in it, pens, receipts, his hotel key card. All the generalised detritus of modern-day living.

“So they came here stripped of anything that might have told us who they were. I have been through several wars, lieutenant. And do you know what that fact speaks of to me?”

Alden nodded. “Espionage of some kind. But what kind? What the hell were they doing here, of all places? And who would kill them?”

McMartin and his personnel – indeed, the entire staff inside this place – had already been interviewed. And none of them – if they were to be believed – had been the slightest bit aware that anything was going on outside the mansion. Holmes could see no reason why they might be lying. The plain truth of the matter was that none of the details of this case made any genuine sense.

He stared out again at the city. In the few days he had been here, he had come to like it very much. It had far more of a European feel than most of the metropolises on this great continent, a rather cultured air about it.

The mist had already grown a little thicker, making the cityscape look just a shade unreal. The gleaming towers rearing out of it, the hills like sleeping dragons and the nearness of the sea … this was a lovely place, and yet potentially a strange one. All types of bizarre things, Holmes believed, could happen here.

“No bodies,” he mused, almost to himself. “No identities. Very little evidence of any kind. There is something that we must do straight away, lieutenant.”

“Being what, precisely?” Greaves asked.

“We must wait and see what happens next.”

* * *

Holmes could not shake off the feeling he was being watched next morning, when he emerged from his hotel down near Union Square. Trying to keep his demeanor casual, he cast his gaze around, attempting to discern if anyone was really looking at him.

It was a pleasant, normal day, people hurrying past him on their way to work, a couple jogging and a youth rattling by on a skateboard. No one appeared to be paying him any serious attention. That is, until his gaze swung over to the doorway to his left.

A ragged man was standing up and coming out from it. He’d obviously been sitting on the porch. And Holmes sighed inwardly as the fellow closed in on him. Here was one aspect of this city he’d come to dislike.

“Hey, buddy?” A grimy hand was thrust out at him. “Spare some change for somebody who’s fallen on hard times?”

The colloquial term for men like this was ‘panhandlers’. And Holmes had never encountered quite so many of them till he’d arrived in San Francisco. They congregated particularly around this area, and were extraordinarily persistent.

He waved a hand and then attempted a polite excuse. Tried to walk away. But the ragged chap was having none of it. He actually blocked Holmes’ way.

“Down on my luck, that’s all I am. I’m not a wino or an addict. Trying to get myself back on my feet, pal. Won’t you do a fellow human being a favour?”

Except that there was a bottle in the beggar’s pocket. Holmes could see its outline clearly. And he doubted that it contained water. This whole diatribe was part of a well-practised patter, designed to weasel on his sympathy and extract some money from him.

Holmes finally started walking, feeling vaguely embarrassed as he did so. But the vagrant followed him along.

“I’m not asking for much, my friend. A buck or two is all. Fifty cents? Just to put some food in my belly, man. I’m trying to find a job, so won’t you help me out till then?”

And in the end, it was too much for even the great detective. Holmes sighed, thrust a hand into his pocket and produced two dollar bills. The panhandler grinned, snatching them away as if he genuinely was due them. He was moving off in the next second, without so much as a glance back or a ‘thank you’.

He oughtn’t have given the chap anything, and Holmes knew that. There had been beggars aplenty in his day, although none that followed you along the street in such a brazen fashion. It had been inward guilt that had made him do it. The suspicion that the fellow might actually be hungry. And it was – almost certainly – a false impression. But, since he was on his way to a hearty breakfast himself, Holmes had let his more kind-hearted impulses get the better of him.

There was a diner nearby he had eaten at before. The food he ordered turned up quickly, and the great detective tucked in. There were bacon and eggs, which he was used to. But a waffle too, and French toast sprinkled with cinnamon. American breakfasts really were quite marvellous. He washed it down with coffee and a glass of orange juice, then paid the bill and headed out again, wandering down to Market Street. There were more panhandlers along the route, but he did his level best to just ignore their gazes.

And there were more of them still on Market Street itself. The place was already filling up with shoppers, and a trolleycar was rumbling by. But, off in the direction of Tenth, Holmes could see a number of these homeless, ragged men.

The older, more experienced ones were clustered in small groups for their protection. And were trying to harass the passers-by, or else were simply chattering amongst themselves. The majority of them had to have had homes and jobs and families at some stage in their lives. So was it plain misfortune that had led them to this sorry state?

Holmes knew better. It was addictions of various kinds that had been the agent of their downfall. And he could even sympathise, since he had some bad habits of his own.

But then his gaze wandered over to those homeless people who were not experienced and not in groups. Much younger ones, teenagers in some cases. They were mostly clad in jeans, sweat-tops, and sneakers, and were huddled on the edges of doorways. These had to be runaways, youngsters who had fled their homes for a variety of reasons. He had come across this phenomenon before, earlier in his travels, and felt genuinely sorry for them. If he could, he’d help them out.

But there were far too many of them. For just one man, the problem was insurmountable. As it had been back in Victorian times, then so it was in this strange age.

Holmes let out a saddened breath, turned away and started heading off in the other direction. And the details of his surroundings … they gradually became lost to him, his mind filling up, all over again, with the particulars of the baffling case that he’d been introduced to.

It still barely deserved that description. A pair of corpses had been found, and then mysteriously vanished. There was no tiniest indication where they had come from whilst alive, what they had been doing, or where they had gone. And that was the sum of everything he knew about the matter. It was worse than knowing nothing.

A shout from nearby broke across his train of thought, making his head rise smartly up. It had come from another of these derelicts, a fairly rotund fellow with grime-smeared features and a dark and bushy beard. Unlike the others, he was on his own. And he was pushing his way past the shoppers with a look of open dismay on his face.

His bloodshot eyes were going everywhere, so he was obviously on the hunt for something.

As Sherlock watched, the man yelled out again.

“Harry?”

So it was someone he was looking for, not something.

“Harry, where are ya?”

A few people shied away, but that apart, nothing much happened.

The panhandler reached a junction. Holmes assumed he’d cross it and continue on. But the man did not. He teetered on the spot for short while instead, then turned back and came the other way, still searching.

And if Harry was another derelict – and how could he possibly not be? – then Holmes understood what this strange scene was all about. Chaps like this, in the absence of any kind of roof over their heads, would claim part of a city’s streets as home. It was their ‘patch’ – they rarely strayed far from it.

Except that, apparently, this ‘Harry’ was gone from his.

It had to happen often. Such unfortunates fell ill, or simply got confused and wandered off. Holmes watched the bearded man a few more seconds, then his mobile phone started ringing in his pocket.

It was Alden Greaves. Who told him, “Mr Holmes, you’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me,” the detective nodded.

* * *

They were back at the mansion on Nob Hill in another half an hour. And had gone past its walls, this time. They were staring into Joel McMartin’s study, which had been recently gutted by a fire. And the man was missing. He had vanished out of nowhere. His security people were flabbergasted, and his wife distraught.

A nanny was currently attending to their one young daughter. Mrs McMartin – Katherine – was in the den, being comforted by a friend. She was something of a trophy wife, in her late-twenties and a one-time model, tall and leggy and naturally blonde. But when she dried her eyes and – under his encouragement – attempted to think everything through rationally, Holmes could see that she was not without intelligence or common sense. In fact, it looked as though she had those qualities in great abundance.

“The first thing I knew about it was when the smoke alarms went off.”

Holmes had sat himself down across from her on, of all things, a psychedelically patterned leather beanbag. But he managed to ignore his peculiar perch, and leaned over to the woman sympathetically.

“He was working?”

“He was always working. Joel didn’t get all of this …” and Kathy gestured at the house around her, “… by just goofing off.”

Ah, the American work ethic. It was very admirable in its way, but gone at in a manner, sometimes, that appeared to verge on the fanatical. Holmes was sufficiently polite, however, to keep that opinion to himself.

“There was no hint of intruders?”

“None,” the woman sniffed.

“And what exactly was he working on?”

Which turned out to be precisely the right question. Kathy’s discomfort lessened slightly, and her lovely pale green eyes took on a thoughtful glaze. She stared at the shag carpet before looking back at him.

“He wouldn’t tell me. But he’s been pretty damn excited the past few days. Kept muttering stuff along the lines of, ‘God, this shit is real’.”

Which was not the kind of answer Holmes had been expecting. And he didn’t care the least bit for that type of vulgar language. But his mood remained calm, and he leaned across a little further.

“And he didn’t explain what he meant by that?”

“He told me that he would do, Mr Holmes. He told me that he’d have an explanation in the next few days. Joel was …” she corrected herself, “… is a very passionate man, obsessed with the work he does. He always thought it would amount to something one day.”

Holmes could not understand why, but he kept that to himself as well. How could the nonsense that was published in that worthless rag ever amount to anything of consequence?

Further enquiry revealed that Joel McMartin had never been turned, by his success, into any kind of aloof and distant businessman. He remained what he’d always been, the hands-on editor of his newspaper, reading and vetting every single article that was printed in it, holding a staff meeting every morning and then handing out the day’s assignments.

“It was his whole life,” Kathy murmured.

At which point she began to cry again, unable to stop herself.

Holmes decided to excuse himself. He found the woman’s pain unbearable, particularly since he’d not come up with any explanation that might soothe her.

Besides which he had already concluded there was nothing more that he could learn by stopping here.

* * *

The offices of the International Inquisitor were located on O’Farrell Street where it curved up towards Geary. And were remarkably small, given the success of the paper. There was McMartin’s own cramped office, another one which dealt with mail, several cubby-holes for those members of staff who worked on advertising and subscriptions. The rest of the reporters had to make do with a single, rather cluttered newsroom.

Glancing around McMartin’s office, Holmes could see how accurate his wife’s description of the man had been. This was not the workplace of a dilettante. The desk was strewn with photographs and jotted notes, the in-tray crammed. Holmes picked through as much of it as he was able, but could find no commonality in anything he saw.

Then – Alden Greaves assisting – he gathered the entire staff together to discuss recent events. When they were told their boss was missing, they looked saddened to the very last. Which told Holmes that the man had been a good employer.

“According to his wife, he had become obsessed with something. I’d suggest a recent story. Did he tell any of you what it was?”

Faces went blank and heads were shaken. Which exasperated the detective.

“Joel was the kind who always kept his cards close to his chest,” a fellow in his mid-thirties with curly reddish hair explained. “He never discussed stuff like that till he was sure that he had all the facts.”

“And he kept all the best stories to himself,” a woman of roughly the same age added. Except she said it without any hint of rancour. McMartin had definitely been popular with his staff.

But ‘facts’? ‘Best’? Their choice of words astonished Holmes. The Inquisitor churned out piffle, and these people – who were in no way stupid – had to understand that. Maybe they could only maintain any sense of worth by telling themselves the work they did was real.

He was reduced, in the end, to asking for back copies of the paper. Then he shut himself in McMartin’s office and studied them assiduously, Greaves watching across his shoulder.

“Uh … what exactly are we looking for, sir?” the lieutenant ventured.

“Ask yourself this question,” Holmes responded, without looking up. “A man disappearing without any explanation, that is one thing, yes. But why a fire? McMartin did not smoke – there are no ashtrays in his house. As for some kind of decorative candle? Look at this office, lieutenant. It is quite Spartan and businesslike.

“No,” the great detective continued, “the blaze was started quite deliberately by the same people who abducted the man. Their sole purpose in doing so had to be to cover something up. To destroy evidence.”

“But what?” a startled Greaves demanded.

Holmes rattled the newssheet he was poring through.

“Do you suppose I’m reading this bilge for my health?”

He went on at his appointed task, although with no great sense of satisfaction. ‘MONSTER SEEN OFF SAN DIEGO COASTLINE’, read one headline. ‘SEXUALLY ABUSED BY GHOSTS’, another. There were blurry photographs of UFOs. Outings of several celebrities the Inquisitor claimed were gay. Stories about cultists who indulged in orgies, and of B-list movie stars who did the same.

‘THE MAN WHOSE ARM GREW BACK.’

‘MY BABY DAUGHTER IS A BRIDE OF SATAN.’

There was even an accompanying photograph of the unfortunate child, with airbrushed carmine eyes.

Sherlock sighed despondently. He supposed it was the same in any epoch mankind had inhabited, but why were people even vaguely interested in dismal fantasies like this?

He went from the front page to the back one of every single edition he’d been handed, without finding anything that aroused his interest the tiniest. The answer had to be that it was something Joel McMartin had been working on, but which had not seen a single word in print as yet.

He rummaged through the man’s desk drawers, unfortunately with the same lack of success.

But then he stopped. Something that he’d recently been told came back to him. ‘Always kept his cards close to his chest,’ a staffer had explained. Which meant McMartin was a secretive man by nature. And people who were that way … they had hiding places.

There were several of the paper’s most strident front pages, framed in glass and hanging right here on the back wall of this office. Holmes stood up and went across to them. And when he moved the second one aside, he found a safe.

“We can get a locksmith in,” Lieutenant Greaves suggested.

“There’s no need for that,” Holmes informed the man. “If I could have absolute silence?”

Then he pressed one ear against the metal door, and began turning the dial slowly.

* * *

It was an agonising and impatient wait, especially for Alden Greaves. But they were back on Market Street again as dusk began to set in. Most of the shoppers had departed, and the avenue was far less busy than it had been. And, as the sky above them started to take on deepening shades of gloom, the mist began to reappear, drifting in from the direction of the bay. Indeed, as the last glimmers of light flickered out on the horizon, it showed every sign of thickening into a full-blown fog.

Holmes and his companion consulted the photograph they had recovered from the safe, for possibly the hundredth time.

“You’re sure that you don’t recognise this alleyway?” the great detective asked.

The sole response that Greaves could give him was a shrug.

“It could be any of a hundred.”

It was only by means of the accompanying letter that they’d known that it was here on this particular byway.

“And there’s no guarantee,” Holmes pointed out, “that the same venue is used each time.”

“No guarantee, either, that this photo isn’t fake.”

But that notion had already occurred to Sherlock Holmes and, after examining it from every reasonable angle, he’d decided to discard it. There was too much that was deeply troubling about this case – too many dead bodies and missing ones – for this to simply be a hoax. He peered warily through the haze-filled gloom.

“Either way, we have to – how do you chaps put it? – check it out. And I suggest that we split up, and keep in contact by means of our mobile phones. Which direction would you like to go, lieutenant? Left or right?”

“I’ll take right,” the police lieutenant said. “You’re new here, and the Tenderloin can be a pretty scary place past nightfall.”

“Nonsense,” Holmes smiled tightly. “I have been in this world far longer than you, lieutenant, and survived much worse.”

And, before the fellow had the time to stop him, he had headed off in the direction of Tenth Street.

* * *

The further along Market he progressed, then the seedier his surroundings became. There were various establishments he’d come across in other parts of the United States, there to provide men with the realisation of their basest fantasies. And there were ugly-looking characters hanging around in darkened doorways. The great detective could feel hostile gazes battening on him as he went along. And he was carrying no gun this evening.

But what he’d told Alden Greaves was true. If he could survive a one-way trip down the Reichenbach Falls, then he could deal with practically anything. Additionally, in the course of his extraordinarily long life, he had picked up many marvellous new talents. That included learning martial arts from Shaolin monks in the Far East.

And yet the most important thing, he understood, was bearing. It was how you held yourself, how you projected your own image to those looking at you. Show no tiniest hint of fear and only a madman would approach you. So he progressed through the Tenderloin with his head held high and his gait steady, just like he was on a brisk and pleasant evening stroll through Regent’s Park.

He gradually began to notice that there were far fewer derelicts hanging about this row of city blocks than there’d been earlier today. And surely, the opposite ought to be the case? How very odd.

Holmes was still turning that over when he suddenly became aware that somebody had dropped in practically beside him, to the rear of his left shoulder. And was walking far too closely, keeping step with him.

The detective halted and turned, fully expecting to be confronted with a mugger or a vagrant. What he got, instead, was a rather familiar-looking woman, apparently in her mid-twenties.

She was easily as tall as he, very healthy in appearance. And her face was attractive in a slightly stiff and artificial way. She was wearing a dark casual suit, with a loose black T-shirt underneath it.

She could have been a close relative, a sibling even, of the dead, photographed couple that he’d seen – the two vanishing corpses that had been discovered outside the McMartin mansion. That struck Holmes straight away. And why the identical manner of dressing?

Her hair was cut short as well. The only difference being that it was black.

He stared at her, more than a little puzzled. And when she failed to speak, he asked her, “Madam, can I be of any help?”

“Walk away from this, Mr Holmes,” she told him curtly.

Holmes could feel a strange sensation, like a tugging at his throat. It was plain puzzlement, nothing more.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is absolutely nothing you can do,” the woman said.

Night had fallen fully. San Francisco’s darkened air was filling up with thick tendrils of fog. Sounds were muffled – everything looked gauzy and quite vague around them.

“That’s a rather generalised statement. If you’d care to be a little more specific?” the detective asked.

But the woman refused to say anything more, and so he quickly glanced around again. It was even harder to make out his surroundings than it had been a minute back. He could make out, however, that the thugs and ne’er-do-wells – most of them drug dealers, surely – who had been hanging around the doorways of this city block had gone from sight to the very last. It was as if they’d sensed that something very odd was happening, and hurriedly made themselves scarce.

“Mr Holmes?” said another voice, a male one, directly behind him.

Sherlock swivelled around quickly, half-convinced that he was going to be attacked. He’d already raised both his forearms, ready to defend himself.

But the owner of the second voice was standing very calmly. He was dressed in the same manner as the woman. Was – Holmes could see – the same generous height. He was almost identical to her in every way, truthfully. Including the fact that his hair was short and black.

Holmes took in something else as well. He could not really make out what hue this chap’s eyes were. Maybe they were blue, or maybe they were green or hazel, but he simply couldn’t tell. Their surfaces were so glossy and reflective, it was like trying to pick out solid colour on a pair of drifting bubbles. Was this person wearing lenses? Or else, who had eyes like that?

“You don’t seem to understand what’s going on here, sir,” the man continued. “This isn’t any criminal case, no. I’m afraid that you’ve found yourself caught up in the middle of a war.”

Holmes had already begun suspecting something along those lines. People were not simply disappearing, they were dying too. He already had strong evidence that grave misdeeds were being performed. And so he held out the photo he’d recovered from the safe.

“And this war of yours has something to do with this?”

It was of a dead-end alley somewhere in this district, and had been taken on a night exactly like this one.

The letter accompanying it was a horribly misspelled scrawl. But what it conveyed was:

‘Dear Mr McMartin,

My name is Deena. I’m fifteen, and I ran away from home in Tuscon three months ago. I’ve been living on the streets down in the Tenderloin since then. It’s been rough, but I’ve managed to make some friends, other runaways like myself.

But then I noticed, a couple of weeks back, that some of them were disappearing. Street people were vanishing, and I didn’t know why. Then, last night, I found the truth out. It happened just off Market. And I still have a cell phone, and it takes pics, so I took one.

Will you print this in your paper? People ought to know.’

What the photograph revealed was utterly remarkable. The alley should have ended merely with a plain brick wall. And there was one of those, for sure. But some kind of shining portal had opened up at the centre of it. Four skinny, unkempt youths were stepping through it, the foremost of them vanishing into nothingness. The rest were about to follow his example, and seemed to display no nervousness about doing so. In fact, you could make out the faces of both the fellows at the rear, and they were blank and stiff, their eyes overly wide. Precisely as if they had been mesmerised.

And they were being ushered through the portal by a tall, blond couple – a man and a woman in dark casual suits. Possibly the same ones who had died outside McMartin’s house.

The black-haired man studied the details swiftly and then nodded, his irises capturing the brilliance of a nearby street lamp.

“They are Slavers,” he confirmed.

“And you?” Holmes enquired, his eyebrows rising.

“We are Abolitionists, exactly like the ones who were active in this country’s Civil War. We’d like to achieve more than we have so far. But we are too few in number.”

“And this is only happening in San Francisco?” Holmes asked.

The man’s head shook. “No. It’s going on in many bigger cities.”

Holmes turned that over for a few slow, pensive seconds.

“These Slavers … they are taking only homeless people? Vagrants, runaways?

“People who will not be missed, yes.”

“And Joel McMartin … he was getting too close to the truth?”

Which got him another nod.

“We stopped the first pair who came after him.” A smile tried to appear on the man’s perfectly shaped but textureless face, and never quite made it. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t stop the second attempt.”

Holmes waved the photograph under his nose again. “And portals such as this? They lead to …?”

“Only to the ship. The slave ship. It’s not far from here, a big one. And it’s leaving soon.”

“We’ll do our best to get McMartin back to you,” the woman said. She was still behind the great detective. “I’m afraid it’s all that we can manage for the moment.”

Except that, when Holmes turned around to look at her, she’d vanished. And when he swung back the other way, the man had vanished too.

His head spun for a short while. And Sherlock Holmes honestly began wondering whether he’d imagined this entire bizarre encounter.

Then he started putting two and two together. And he got smartly on his mobile phone to Lieutenant Greaves.

* * *

Greaves had left his car parked just off the main drag, and in another few minutes they were racing across the city’s precipitous hilltops in the direction of Fisherman’s Wharf.

“A ship, you say?”

“A large one, yes, apparently,” Holmes told him.

“Then shouldn’t we be headed for the port?”

Holmes kept his face expressionless. “I’m not sure that the Port Authority would quite know what to do with this one.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Then drive on, good lieutenant. All will be explained.”

The bayfront area was deserted when they reached it, the restaurants and stalls all shut. The fog was so thick in this area, they could not see more than a dozen yards ahead of them. As they went down to the water, Holmes could make out the faint shape of a wooden pier. The bark of sea lions was audible in the distance, wild and gloomy-sounding on a night like this.

“We need a boat!” Holmes insisted.

Alden Greaves was looking more confounded with every second that passed, but he deferred to his companion and began to hunt for one.

And luck was on their side, at last. An old codger with a fishing rod was pulling up to the quay in a twelve-foot dinghy that was powered by an outboard motor. Greaves waved his badge at the fellow, shouting, and then commandeered the craft.

And before much longer, both detectives were headed out across the bay, going towards the centre of it.

Seawater sloshed hollowly against the thin sides of the dinghy. It was a genuine pea-souper out here; the lights of the receding city and the smaller lamps on the vaulting bridges were reduced to no more than a glow-worm’s muted brilliance. The world around them had become a ghostly after-image of its former self, and the sounds that reached their ears were dull and flattened ones.

They seemed to be utterly alone in the impenetrable gloom. Alden Greaves was trying to peer ahead, with no success.

“You can’t moor a ship out here,” he pointed out. “So is it on the move?”

Holmes glanced back in the direction of the mainland. And it was completely lost from view by this stage, not a single point of brightness showing, like a bleached grey curtain had dropped down across it.

“I’m assured it will be very soon,” he answered.

Then he suddenly became aware of a vibration that had started out of nowhere. It ran right up from the hull of the dinghy into the soles of his shoes. And it appeared to be coming from the waters of the bay itself.

Holmes and the lieutenant peered over the side. The waves had died away. The brine around them had become almost entirely flat. Except it looked like it was trembling slightly, at the same pitch as that strange vibration.

Holmes started to hear a peculiar noise, a bare few seconds after that. Terribly faint, initially. But it appeared to be … a throbbing of some kind … a queer, mechanical or possibly electric pulsing. The kind of sound that you’d expect to find emerging from a power station. There were none of those out in the middle of this bay.

Was it growing louder, or were they simply getting nearer to it?

Then he saw a light, and not like anything they’d left behind them. This was a peculiar greenish-yellow, and was pulsing too. And it was coming from beneath the water.

Alden Greaves let out an oath, but Holmes only frowned tightly, seeing he’d been right. Where else in this city could you hide a ship as large as the one that the dark-haired man had intimated? Why, it had to be the bay, of course!

The fog ahead of them had grown so dense that they could only make the glow out very dimly, and they could not even tell how far away it was.

“We need to get much closer!” Holmes demanded.

Greaves, who had been charged with handling the outboard, rapidly complied.

The great detective moved up to the front of the small dinghy. Either the pulsating light was already nearer than he’d thought, or else its source was very large. As he watched, it started to grow brighter. Then he spotted ripples spreading out from that direction, and he could see what the truth was.

The light wasn’t gaining in intensity. Whatever was producing it was pushing upwards to the surface.

There was an abrupt slapping and hissing sound, the noise of water being parted. For the briefest instant, Holmes could see that there was not one single greenish-yellow light, but thousands of them, closely knit. He had barely the time to hang onto that single image.

And then the lights all blurred. They shot upwards with incredible speed. And – between one heartbeat and the next – they’d vanished altogether.

The dinghy began to be rocked by a series of large bow-waves, caused by the disturbance to the surface of the bay. And the fog ahead was swirling too, disturbed in the same way.

“What the …?” blurted Alden Greaves

When Holmes looked back at the lieutenant, the poor chap’s mouth was hanging wide open and his features were utterly colourless and slack.

“What the …?” the man said again, in a whisper.

It seemed to be the only thing he could say, at that moment.

Holmes went back, reached past the dumbstruck fellow and switched off the outboard briefly.

Over the sound of the bow-waves, he could now hear splashing, and a man shouting for help.

“Joel McMartin, I presume,” he nodded.

“Someone dumped him out here?” Greaves managed to stutter.

“No, lieutenant. Someone liberated him. And we’d better go and fish him out, before he drowns.” Holmes listened again and then pointed. “Over there.”

Greaves started powering them in that direction.

“Faster, lieutenant,” Holmes insisted. “I’m sure our Mr McMartin will be very anxious to run this new story in his paper, once we’ve got him back to dry land. The only problem is …”

And Holmes smiled wryly.

“What sensible person would ever believe it? A clear example of a bad boy crying wolf, is it not? Ah, the irony is practically delicious.”

SHINY TRINKETS

It was a room with no windows, and only one door in and out, which was steel reinforced and had been firmly locked.

An absolutely classic case, Holmes thought. How utterly perfect.

The Vanderbruck apartment stretched around him, its corridors aglow with tasteful opulence. In fact, ‘apartment’ was too small a word for the place. It took up the entire top two levels of a twelve-storey block on the Upper East Side, and was accessed by a private elevator, which was always guarded. There was a separate elevator for the staff and all deliveries, and that was guarded too. The Vanderbruck family had made its fortune long ago, from a combination of banking, investment and property development. As well as this place, there was a mansion in the Hamptons and a winter home in the Antilles. Holmes had done his research.

He could hear the faint murmur of traffic from Park Avenue, below them. It had been a while since he’d been in New York.

Holmes examined the heavy mahogany door. It had already been dusted for fingerprints, and he could not detect the slightest mark on its polished woodwork.

“You say the lock is electronic?” he asked his new associate, Detective Lieutenant Mary Ascento of the NYPD.

“That’s right. To get in you have to punch a code.” She indicated the keypad. “So any recent entries are recorded. And according to those, this door hasn’t been opened in the last thirty-six hours.”

Peter and Phyllis Vanderbruck – the owners of this place and the victims of the theft – gazed at Holmes unhappily, obviously wondering how he could help them. They were a gentle-looking couple in their mid-sixties, and had a look of deep dismay on both their faces.

Holmes looked away from them and gazed into the room in question. To say it was empty was to miss the point. The place looked hollowed out. Around its walls were ninety-seven settings which had, until today, housed one of the world’s finest collections of Fabergé eggs. But every single one was gone. The place looked like a candy store after a horde of kids had rampaged through it.

“Electronic surveillance?” Holmes inquired, looking around for a closed circuit camera.

“Not in here,” Peter Vanderbruck chimed in. “The elevators, yes. But they show only the usual people coming in and out.”

“And the key code is known to precisely whom?”

“Myself. My wife. Thomas Mason, who is in charge of security and has been with us for twenty years. And that is all.”

Holmes had already met with Mason, and the man had struck him as unanswerably trustworthy and reliable.

“And are there any other ways in from outside? A terrace, perhaps?”

“Yes, of course.”

Holmes followed the couple through the hushed, echoing corridors until they reached a set of French windows that led out into the sunlight. There was a great billow of greenery off in one direction – Central Park, the baroque outline of the Sherry Netherland in another, followed, in the background, by the high, rearing shapes of far more famous structures still. However much Holmes missed London, he was forced to admit that New York was a truly splendid city.

The terrace was large enough to play a game of tennis on and still have room for the spectators. The great detective paced the length of it, glancing over the parapet occasionally and inspecting the contours of the building’s roof. There was no sign of anything out of place. Additionally, there were little laser beam projectors set about the edges of this area. Which, when he inquired, were switched on at night, precisely when this theft had taken place. If the beams were broken, an alarm went off. And so the thief had most probably not gained entry by means of this terrace.

He wandered back to Mary Ascento and then drew her to one side.

“Any ideas, sir?” she asked him quietly. She was short but pugnacious-looking, in her late thirties with dyed blonde hair, an upturned nose, and thick dark eyebrows.

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir’. And ideas are generated by facts and evidence, and there are none of those. The eggs are gone … that is the only thing we genuinely know. How they were reached, how they were removed? There’s not the slightest way of telling.”

The lieutenant grunted. “So where do we go from here?”

“You have contacts in the underworld, surely? The sudden appearance on the black market of almost a hundred Fabergé eggs will certainly excite some comment. At the moment, I would say that that is your best hope.”

“If you don’t mind me remarking,” Mary came back at him, “I was hoping for a little more than that from someone with your reputation.”

Holmes stared down pensively at his shoes for several moments, and then shrugged and tried to force a smile.

“I know how you feel,” he told the woman. “Indeed, so was I.”

* * *

Holmes tried not to let it bother him too much. There had been cases in the past which had appeared to be indecipherable at first, and he had always come up with an explanation. He took a long walk through the park to clear his head, had an early supper at a steak house on 58th, then decided to take in a show. Theatre had certainly come on a lot since his day, with its tricks of lightning and mutating stages and the acrobatic skills of its performers. But he couldn’t keep his mind on it, and left before the end.

His head was down as he trudged back to his hotel.

Not a clue. He had found not a single shred of evidence inside the Vanderbruck apartment; not a stain, nor a hair, nor even an awkward sideways glance from any of the household staff. And Mary Ascento had been correct about his reputation. He had come to think of himself in the same way as the general public did, as something of a clue magnet. He only had to stand there, usually, and evidence came rushing up to greet him. But in this case, there had been none.

Which led him to wondering. What manner of thief, exactly, got into an apartment like that and out again without leaving the slightest trace that he had ever been there?

The more he turned it over, then the more he saw it had to be an inside job. But in which case, done by the hand of whom?

He didn’t watch his TV that night, and slept fitfully. And was woken, at one-thirty in the morning, by the telephone ringing by his bedside.

It was Lieutenant Mary Ascento once again.

* * *

There were a dozen squad cars in attendance when his cab pulled up. The sidewalk and store windows of 47th Street were awash with flashing red. Mary spotted him, came towards him through a sea of dark blue uniforms, and led the way into the establishment in question.

Willem’s was one of the largest diamond traders on an entire block of them. There was the kind of security that you would normally expect in such a place – heavy grilles and cameras and alarms. And all the merchandise was tucked away into a safe with a timed lock when there was no one present. But it was not the ordinary stones that the thief had been after. Mary led Holmes into a small vault tucked away at the rear. At the centre was a raised plinth. And on the plinth there had been, until very recently, four large blue diamonds called the Capetown Sisters.

They were, naturally, no longer there, although the glass case covering them was still in place.

“An alarm’s supposed to go off when you lift it,” Mary pointed out. “It didn’t. And we checked it, and the thing does work. There’s no one tampering with the electronics here.”

Then she drew Holmes’ attention to a camera pointed at the plinth.

“It’s remote. A security guard in another building was watching this vault the entire time. One moment, the jewels were there. And the next, they were gone.”

“Security guards can be notoriously lax,” Holmes commented. “He was doubtlessly engrossed in some magazine. Or he might have even been visiting the bathroom.”

But then he stared around. The vault’s door was six-inch thick titanium steel, and on a timer too. And when he pushed down through his shoes against the vinyl-looking floor …

“Pressure pads,” Mary confirmed. “You can’t get in or out of this room, or move anything, without bells ringing.”

“And yet they did not,” Holmes mused.

Forensics people had begun working around them, dusting for prints and vacuuming for DNA. But Sherlock Holmes was willing to bet they would find nothing.

Perhaps the very lack of clues was the real evidence here? It was an approach to crime he’d never adopted before.

But the more he thought about it, then the more he saw that it was worth considering.

He asked to see the video recording from the camera, naturally. He and Mary watched it in stunned silence. One moment, the four diamonds were there. And the next they weren’t, with nothing intervening.

It wasn’t even tape. It was an electronic record.

“We’ll certainly get it checked and see if it’s been tampered with,” Mary assured him.

But – once again – he was convinced they would find nothing. Holmes curled an index finger, pressed it to his chin. And kept it there a good long while.

“Something coming to you?” Mary asked him, her thick eyebrows lifting.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Holmes grinned back at her awkwardly.

But he had lived by one simple adage the entire time he had worked as a consulting detective. ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

It was impossible for any man to get inside here without setting off the numerous alarms. It was impossible for any man to steal the diamonds without the event being recorded by this camera.

And so …

That was when he saw that he was going at this whole case from entirely the wrong angle, and he almost cursed himself.

* * *

Holmes didn’t sleep for the remainder of the night. There was an internet facility in his room and – much though he loathed the damned fiddly thing – he made thorough use of it, researching deeply into a good number of subjects. He had all the information that he needed by seven in the morning, and put a call through to Lieutenant Ascento, who was still awake as well and sounded rather cranky.

“I need you to arrange something for me,” he informed her.

“Okay. Name it.”

“I believe it’s called colloquially ‘the Met’. Your Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art? It has a special exhibition showing at the moment.”

“And you want a ticket? Stand in line.”

“No,” Holmes explained to her calmly. “I wish to be allowed to remain with the exhibit after the museum had closed. Can you make that happen?”

“I …” Mary faltered, sounding mightily confused. “Sure, I guess. If you think it’s the next target, I can have the place staked out.”

“No,” Holmes told her. “I’d like to be there alone.”

He could almost see, in his mind’s eye, the woman’s eyebrows coming up again.

“You don’t think that’s a little dangerous?” she asked him.

But Holmes only smiled.

“Being alive is dangerous, lieutenant. I’ll be fine.”

Then, satisfied that she would do as he had asked, he hung the handset up.

His mind was still buzzing, all the same. And he needed to get a few hours good rest if he was to be at his best and sharpest during the hours of the forthcoming night. Holmes made sure all the drapes in his bedchamber were firmly shut, then phoned down to room service.

The staff there were slightly shocked to be asked to deliver two pina coladas at this hour of the morning. But, politely and efficiently, they brought them to his room.

* * *

Occasionally, he could hear the tapping footsteps of the museum’s uniformed security personnel. They would approach the room that he was in, but turn away before they reached it. Every last member of staff had been told that he was there, and been advised to keep their distance.

Otherwise, the Met was practically silent around him.

It was a room near the centre of the building that Holmes was seated in. Once again, there were no windows. Every light had been switched off. He was on a high-backed wooden chair tucked away into one corner, so engulfed in shadow he was certain he would not be spotted. And he did not move. He’d have loved to be able to shift around a little while he waited, but he could not risk it.

The wall behind him shuddered occasionally with the vibration of passing traffic. New York wasn’t only a city that never slept – it was a city that never shut up, not for an instant. Holmes reflected on that ruefully as the time passed, minutes turning gradually to hours. Much though he admired this place, he wasn’t sure that he could live here. He was far more used to the tranquillity that London sometimes offered, and the progressive decades that he’d lived through had not altered his opinion on that.

In front of him was the special exhibition he’d found reference to on his computer. The fabled Pieders Collection, only in New York for one month before it was transferred to Chicago. It consisted of fine and priceless artefacts collected by the family of that name back in the Dutch East India days. Jewelled scimitars and shields. Whole miniature herds of solid gold elephants, with sapphires for their eyes. Similarly, statuettes of tigers, camels, even men. And turbans with massive diamonds and emeralds embedded in their brows.

These had all been gifts from wealthy rajahs to the Pieders family, or else had been confiscated as a means of retribution when those rajahs had rebelled. Almost fifty million dollars’ worth of endowments and plunder. Little wonder the exhibit was not staying long.

In the middle of the room – on a plinth and under glass, just like the last time – was the centrepiece of the collection. The Mazziristan Orb, about half the size again of the Queen’s royal orb back in London, twenty-four carat gold throughout and inlaid with flawless precious jewels of every colour, many of them massive. It had been made common knowledge that half the sum value of this entire collection lay contained in that one single piece.

A thick red web of laser beams surrounded it. A butterfly could not get through without setting something off. The floor around it, once again, had pressure pads below it. There were cameras of course, four of them this time. And there were only two ways in and out of this room – both of them had rows of heavy iron bars lowered across them by this hour.

Holmes risked angling his wrist to take a brief glance at his watch, which had a luminous dial. He had been sitting here for practically three hours, with nothing happening. He’d become extremely stiff – his lower back and thighs had begun aching gently. But he employed a meditation technique that he had learned from those Buddhist monks back in the Laotian jungle. His body relaxed slightly, the pain easing, and he was able to remain in place.

But not for very long, as it turned out. His cell phone went off suddenly, in his pocket. He cursed and fished it out, answering it quickly. He could already see from the screen that it was Mary.

“Yes?” he hissed, frustration welling up in him.

“You’ve got it wrong, Holmes,” came the lieutenant’s voice. “Another diamond store on 47th has just been hit, same M.O. as before.”

“And the name of the store?” Holmes inquired.

“Van Engrim.”

“As I thought,” Holmes muttered. “And might I remind you, there was more than one just robbery last night. I am not in the wrong place. So kindly bother me no further.”

“You’re the great detective,” Mary sighed.

And she hung up.

* * *

Another hour passed. And then another one. Even the footsteps of the guards in the remainder of the building became slower and more muted. And Holmes almost came near to dozing off.

He jerked, righting himself. Admonished himself for being so careless. After that, he fixed his attention on the softly glowing orb in front of him, staring at it like a hawk. Such was his mental acuity, he could keep on doing that for the rest of the night, if need be.

The cell phone was still in his hand, from when Mary had called him. It was a new one, and came with several interesting facilities. And a fresh notion had taken shape in the detective’s mind. He waited to see if this thing might be useful.

There was a gentle movement in the corner of his eye. Holmes froze.

A trio of men had stepped into the room. But how? The bars were still in place. And there wasn’t even an entranceway in the direction they’d arrived from.

As they stepped fully into his field of view, Holmes could see they were not solid. They were misty outlines, each of them, a few vague details of the room apparent through them in the darkness. Their bodies appeared to shine very gently, with the same kind of faint lustre that simple marsh gas has. And they were most definitely not – by the way that they were dressed or by the structure of their taut faces – of European origin.

They didn’t seem to have noticed him, their gazes all fixed firmly on the Mazziristan Orb. They crossed over to it as he watched, their footfalls not producing the tiniest echo. And they had to be stepping on the pressure points by now, but no bells started ringing.

And then the reddened laser beams were passing through their dim, cloak-shrouded bodies, with the same lack of result.

Extremely gingerly, Holmes raised his mobile phone. It was capable of taking video footage for a while, and he employed that function now. No human figures appeared on its tiny screen – the room looked empty save for the collection. And when he played the recording back, the result was precisely the same. So cameras were unable to capture images of these three figures.

One of the intruders, the tallest and the eldest, stretched his right arm out. His hand passed directly through the pane of glass shielding the orb. And when the man’s palm closed around the precious artefact, it disappeared from sight.

Holmes was so shocked that he simply couldn’t help himself. He sprang to his feet, and the three men noticed that. Their ancient gazes swivelled round. Their lined mouths tightened with surprise. But their wrinkled faces were impassive save for that. The three of them stared at him wordlessly.

Feeling pretty certain that this trio would not hurt him – Holmes stepped forward quietly.

“Can you understand what I am saying?” he asked them.

The one who was obviously the leader nodded.

“You are from a clan of the Lenape people, yes?”

The response was the same.

“I mean you no harm,” Holmes advised them. “And I obviously cannot stop you doing what you want. But it would satisfy my curiosity if we discussed this for a while. Is that agreeable to you?”

The man he was addressing nodded once again.

* * *

It was dawn when Mary Ascento walked into Sherlock Holmes’ hotel. He had phoned her, and was waiting in the lobby.

The lieutenant looked not only tired but mightily put out, her face nearly bloodless and her dark eyes blazing.

“What the hell have you been up to?” she demanded. “I’ve been working all night. What have you been doing?”

“Conversing, for the most part,” Holmes informed her, selecting a comfortable armchair and setting himself down in it.

Mary did not follow suit. She put both her fists on her hips.

“Conversing with who?”

“The culprits,” Holmes informed her mildly.

The woman practically exploded.

“Who are where, exactly?”

Holmes could only shrug.

“Nowhere you could ever get at them, I’m afraid.”

“So all that priceless stuff is gone?”

“Yes. The Mazziristan Orb included.”

“But who’s responsible?”

Holmes smiled quietly to himself and tented his fingertips beneath his chin.

“My first clue,” he explained to the distressed lieutenant, “was when I realised that no living people could have got into either the Vanderbruck apartment or the vault at Willem’s in the way they did. And so, if not a living man, it had to be a dead one. More likely several. My second clue lay in the names of all the victims. Not merely Vanderbruck and Willem, but Pieders and Van Engrim too. All of them of Dutch origin. Which goes directly to motive.”

When he saw how bewildered poor Ascento was becoming, his smile grew a little broader.

“Why, detective, I’m surprised at you,” he said. “I took you, by your accent and your manner, to be a native New Yorker. And surely you must have heard this piece of local folklore … how Manhattan was obtained in the first place?”

The woman started looking at him as though quite convinced that he was going mad, so Holmes continued quickly.

“It was purchased from the Lenape people by a group of Dutch settlers led by a certain Peter Minuit. And if the stories are to be believed, the payment made for this whole island was a pile of shiny trinkets, baubles and bolts of cloth that amounted to a cash value of sixty gilders. About twenty-four dollars. For one of the most valuable areas of real estate on the face of this planet. Don’t you see?”

When Mary became totally blank, Holmes shook his head wearily.

“It is indisputably the case that the Lenape were cheated. That knowledge must have weighed down on them very heavily during their sojourn in the spirit world.”

And then he got back to his feet again, for dramatic effect as much as anything else.

“So they’ve returned. And they are finally exacting proper payment.”

A SHADOW IN THE HARBOUR

Sherlock Holmes was sitting on the terrace of his grand hotel, sipping at yet another pina colada, enjoying the sunshine and the view, when he noticed the formally dressed Chinese man walking steadily towards him.

Hong Kong whirred and racketed around them. The tall skyscrapers caught the light and gleamed, as did the spread of water out in front of him. A jetliner went overhead, coming in to land. A pair of the famous Star Ferries were plying the bay, one of them heading outward to Kowloon Peninsula, the other coming back this way.

The great detective had not felt quite so comfortable for many years. He loved this fascinating town, but there was more than that. The water he was perched above was Victoria Harbour. The mountain behind him was Victoria Peak. Not far from here was a large, lovely stretch of parkland called Victoria Park, which had a statue of the great lady herself. He had finally arrived in a part of the world where the glories of his age were not forgotten, and Holmes couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t come here sooner.

The man stopped in front of his table. Holmes looked him quickly up and down. Mid- to late-sixties. Thin and slightly haggard, but from overwork rather than malnourishment. A plain charcoal suit. A plain white shirt. But those shoes, if he was not mistaken, were handmade by Capaveldi of Milan. His interest was slightly piqued.

“Mr Holmes, may I introduce myself? I am Simon Pang. Would it be any trouble if I joined you for a minute?”

And this was not merely an admirer. The man had a rather anxious air, which he was trying to hide.

Holmes nodded his assent, and then continued watching the fellow carefully as he sat down, taking note of the way he ran a hand across his brow, the way he rearranged his cuffs. The great detective soaked in every detail.

Simon Pang brushed his hands together quickly. “Could I tell you a little about myself?”

“Certainly not. I’ll tell you.” And Holmes smiled broadly. “You are a wealthy man, but from humble origins, and you never let yourself forget that fact. There are old scars on your palms that speak of heavy manual labour far back in your past. Your hair is expensively barbered and your fingernails immaculately manicured, yet you tend to fiddle with them. Your clothing is tailor-made and of the finest cloth, but you have allowed not the slightest touch of ostentation to it. Your wristwatch is worth about a thousand dollars; by your wardrobe, you could afford something considerably more pricey, but have opted against it.

“You are a good Christian man,” the detective continued. “Most Hong Kong Chinese, on converting to that faith, take on a Western first name. Hence the Simon. And your manner and your bearing are reminiscent of a devout man in church. I’d say you’ve made your wealth …”

And Holmes paused for a bare couple of seconds.

“… from shipping. When you first approached me, I noticed something of the mariner to your gait. And your watch – yes, the watch again – displays time zones from right across the globe, so that you are able to keep track of where your cargoes are.”

Then he settled back into his chair, taking a quiet delight in Mr Pang’s awed expression.

“I was in the merchant navy for twenty years before I set up on my own,” the man admitted. “All the stories that I’ve heard about you appear to be true. I’m very much impressed.”

Holmes waved a hand idly. “No need to be. Simple deduction, that is all. And can I tell you something else?”

Pang waited.

“You have not come to me for fear of your own safety,” Holmes finished up. “Believing in eventual paradise as you do, you’re not afraid of death. But you are afraid for other people. I can see it in your eyes.”

“It started a couple of months ago.”

Pang leant across the table, his gaze boring into Holmes’. A waiter had come across by this time, and there was a tall glass of club soda fizzing at the fellow’s elbow.

“My docks are over to the south. They are active twenty-four hours a day. But it is always the night shift that is attacked.”

He went on to explain. New freighters came in every night. His men would be busy unloading their cargoes. Cranes would whirr. Sinews would heave. A normal working night down at the dockyards. But almost every week so far, at some point in the proceedings, one of his people would go off on some task that separated him from the rest.

The others would hear a sudden wail. Occasionally, there’d be a splash. And they would hurry over to the source of the commotion – to find no one there at all.

“No floating corpse?”

Pang shook his head. “Nothing. Seven of my men have simply disappeared, out of a workforce of two hundred.”

“And what do the police make of it?”

“They are as baffled as everybody else.”

“But do you have any suspicions?” the detective asked.

At which, Mr Pang’s demeanour became considerably graver.

“We all think the same thing, Mr Holmes. We believe it is the Triads.”

Holmes stiffened at the mention of that name. He’d heard of those criminal gangs long before he’d arrived here. In fact, he had encountered their like in Victorian London. They could be counted amongst the most brutal villains in the world, merciless in the defence of their illicit empires. One of their modus operandi in these parts – or so he understood – was to threaten the lives of the actual families of policemen pursuing them, and even carry out those threats. The special squads that pursued the Triads, therefore, were entirely made up of a courageous elite of young men and women who were single, with no spouse or child. Holmes’ admiration for them was entirely boundless.

“But you have no proof?” he insisted, getting back to the point.

“I have been approached from time to time.”

“They wish your line to smuggle items for them, drugs and weapons and the like?”

“And I’ve rebuffed them every time, despite their threats.” Pang folded his hands and stared at them a moment, then continued. “I believe that one of the gangs is trying to soften up my attitude. I think that they have sent a lone assassin to attack my men. A shadowy figure has been spotted very briefly near the docks, about the time of several of the disappearances. There one moment, gone the next, the stealthiest of apparitions.”

Holmes listened to this with his eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Almost like a ninja, then?”

But that was Japanese, not Chinese, and both men knew it.

Suddenly, the day seemed not quite so pleasant, the colours muted, the sunlight dulled.

Holmes took another sip of his drink, and then frowned.

* * *

Simon Pang’s base of operations turned out to be not in Hong Kong City itself, but in Aberdeen, on the far side of the island. Sherlock Holmes had not been there until now. They were borne across the island in Pang’s limousine.

As they entered the town, Holmes could see how different it was to the place where he’d been staying. It was apparently more vulnerable to the weather – as the water came in sight again, he noticed how heavily constructed was the harbour wall.

“It is one of our typhoon walls,” his host told him, “since we get at least a couple of such storms every year.”

And although the place was full of towers, none of them were like the sturdy modernistic ones that he had left behind. They were mostly as tall, certainly, but narrow, so that they created the effect of massive pencils stacked inside a box.

“The same thing,” Pang explained. “If the towers were wider, then the storms might damage them. These are constructed, like the branches of a willow, to yield to the massive winds. They bend slightly, in other words, and so avoid serious harm. They sway, sometimes for several days.”

What must it be like, Holmes wondered, to occupy one of the apartments at the very top during a three- or four-day monsoon? An extremely bilious experience, most likely. And one that he’d not like to go through.

This was a place that made uneasy bargains with the elements.

They finally reached the entrance to Pang’s shipping company. It was a massive double iron gate, guarded by four security men. Beyond it, to either side, stretched chain-link fences at least ten feet tall, with razor wire at the top. The narrow cables running from them told Holmes that the fences were alarmed. And he could make out more security people, with Alsatian dogs, patrolling the perimeter. The place was sealed as tightly as a corked-up bottle of Bordeaux. This assassin had to be extremely skilful even to get in.

Once they were waved through, nothing more that was unusual met his eye. But he could not claim the same thing for his inner senses.

There were rows of warehouses, an office block, stacks of containers, cranes. And rugged-looking men were wandering about, all of them in orange hardhats. These were Pang’s employees. They were trying to go about their business in their usual fashion.

But were doing it with such an air of gloom and apprehension you could cut it with a knife.

The scent of fear hung about this place like a thick miasma. Perhaps even the scent of death. Pang could sense it too, apparently, because he stiffened in his seat, his eyes becoming slightly wider.

“Would you like to talk to any of my people?” he enquired.

“Maybe later,” Holmes replied. He seriously doubted that he would hear any more from them than what he’d already been told. “Perhaps we should go down to the water?”

Pang smiled stiffly, gave instructions to the driver.

“The newest of my fleet is in,” he told Holmes as their vehicle altered course. “The Goliath of Aberdeen. You really have to see her.”

It was a truly massive cargo freighter, practically a floating city. As they drew closer to the ship, it loomed above them like a cliff, blocking out the sunlight.

“Good Lord almighty!” Holmes exclaimed. “It’s twice the size of the Titanic!”

“Nearly three times,” Pang grinned proudly. “We had to deepen the channel through the harbour simply to allow it ingress.”

Holmes stared out across the placid grey water. “You dredged it?”

“Certainly. And you wouldn’t believe the stuff that we pulled out. A couple of sunken tugboats. And even the wreckage of a fighter plane from the war.”

He paused momentarily, thinking that last scrap of information through, then asked, half as a joke, “You don’t suppose that our assassin is the ghost of that same pilot?”

Holmes understood how superstitious Hong Kong people were. And the things he had encountered in his travels told him that they had good reason. But he did not think that the culprit was any ghost in this case.

“Anything is possible,” he conceded, keeping his suspicions to himself.

When they reached the dockside, both of them got out. The breeze was very salty, had the slightest tang of seafood to it. Holmes stared across the mighty harbour, and his gaze alighted on a gaudily attired ship he’d read about in his guidebooks. The legend down its side read ‘Jumbo Floating Restaurant’. It had been featured in countless moving picture shows, including those ones with the fictional James Bond. An absurd, soulless and priapic thug of a character, Holmes had thought since first encountering him, nothing like the passionate but noble James T Kirk.

Then he forgot about such musings, and his gaze took him further along, to an enormous row of smaller wooden vessels packed in side by side along the far end of the harbour. He had read about this in the guidebooks too.

“Yes,” Pang confirmed, seeing where his guest was looking. “That is the Aberdeen Floating Village.”

“Could I take a closer look?”

Pang’s personal launch was brought along. They both climbed into it. As they powered closer, Holmes could see that he was not the only person who was curious about the place. Several sampans, filled from stem to stern with Western tourists, were examining the place.

The launch slowed down. Holmes was able to get a clearer view of the junks. All of them seemed seaworthy, but most of them were shabby-looking.

“There are around six hundred of them,” Pang informed him, “with six thousand people living on them They are mostly Tanka tribesfolk – a primitive people by our standards.”

There were indeed people on the creaking wooden decks, and children running round, and dogs who barked and snarled at all the passing tourists. Most of the adults – who looked undernourished – wore those conical straw items of headgear that had been called ‘coolie hats’ in his day.

From the end of one of the junks, several skinny youths were diving into the bay and swimming around. And on another, a woman was hauling up a bucket on a rope. It was full of the same grey water, presumably to bathe in.

And then Holmes spotted something even more curious. One of the tourist sampans got extremely close to one of the junks. The passengers on board all raised their cameras.

And the Tanka folk, who were their prospective subjects, immediately removed their hats and covered their faces with them, to avoid being photographed. They looked like criminals ducking the attention of the press, but Holmes realised that that was not the case.

“They are afraid,” he mused, “that the photographs will steal their souls.”

“Exactly so,” his host confirmed. “As I said, they’re primitive.”

He went on to explain that the junks left the harbour at least once a day to catch fish and seafood, mostly for the local restaurants. But it was a mere scratching of a living. These ‘boat people’ were extremely poor.

“Most of them are born on a junk, live on it and even die on it, their feet never once touching dry land. And it has been that way for them for generations.”

“Incredible,” Holmes breathed.

It had to be a curiously isolated kind of life. All told, he would much rather inhabit one of those thin towers.

* * *

Once back ashore, he spent a while conversing with the dockworkers, Mr Pang translating for him. And – as he had expected – they all told him the same story that he had already heard. The merest brief glimpses of a crouching shadow of a man down by the waterside. And then a scream, perhaps a splash. And then another disappearance.

The mood of the fellows he spoke to was grim. They needed this job, could not give it up. Yet they understood that they were all in mortal peril.

“It’s an assassin from the Triads,” he heard several times. “They are murdering us one by one.”

Holmes stared out again at the fence surrounding this enclosure, the height of it, the razor wire at the top, the guards patrolling it, and found himself revisiting the same conclusion he had come to when he’d first arrived: if some assassin was getting into this place, he was coming from the unprotected water.

“A frogman?” Pang hissed.

“Yes,” Holmes whispered. “I believe it might be so.”

They were crouching in the shadow of a massive stack of canisters, the evening thickening around them. Lights had come on all over the dockyard. The night shift had arrived, and the security patrols had been redoubled.

None of which served to alleviate the air of tension hanging round the place. You could almost smell it, like the salt tang on the air. The dockworkers were trying to stick close together, not letting each other out of sight. But more cargo was being unshipped all the time, diverse bundles of it, and it was difficult.

As Holmes watched, a crate fell from its pallet and skittered away. A single man went after it, going dangerously close to the waterside.

“They are not children,” Pang complained. “I cannot command them to walk double-file and hold each others’ hands. They have a job to do.”

And Holmes could see how that was right. And yet it worked to the killer’s advantage.

* * *

An hour after night had fallen, one of the workmen seemed to forget about that fact. He ceased his labours, stretched his limbs, and then produced a pack of cigarettes and walked off towards an empty quay. It was obviously his habit to take a ‘smoke break’ about this hour.

“A dangerous habit,” Holmes muttered, “made even more parlous by the situation that you find yourselves in.”

Indeed, it seemed a reckless thing to do under such circumstances. Perhaps the fellow was of low intelligence, or else his addiction outweighed the potential danger.

Holmes followed the man at a crouch, Pang coming after him. They took great pains to keep out of sight. The fellow clicking at his lighter did not even notice them.

There he stood against the water, reduced to a shadow himself, only his orange hardhat and the glowing tip of his cigarette producing any hue. And at first, the harbour remained almost motionless. The darkened water rippled gently, sloshing against the piers. A gull rose from the surface momentarily, then settled down again.

The man continued puffing, sending plumes of smoke up that were scattered by the breeze.

He took his final draw, then flung the butt out onto the seawater. Holmes could see it land.

And then the surface beside it suddenly bulged.

The workman had not noticed. He was already turning away. The bulge had reached the quayside in another moment.

Then an arm came reaching out.

Holmes heard Pang gasp, and cautioned him to silence with a gesture, not even looking around. His eyes were glued to the unfolding spectacle, since this was happening so very fast.

A second arm followed the first. Hands seized the quayside, and then hauled a body out.

It was merely a silhouette. A shadow. Moisture poured from it. But Holmes’s brow furrowed. From what he could make out of its general shape …

And then the time for thought was over, and the time for action was at hand. The figure was closing in quickly on the hapless workman, who had only just begun to realise that he was not alone out here.

He swivelled round, and let out a hoarse yell which was answered with a flurry of urgent cries from his distant workmates.

They were too far away. This would be over in an instant. Holmes stood to his full height and ran forwards, bellowing with rage.

The lone assassin, seeing that he’d been discovered, halted before he had reached his intended victim. Stood frozen a moment, and then headed back the other way.

Before Holmes could get anywhere near him, the timeless ocean had swallowed him up.

“You were right,” said Pang, a few minutes later. “He was wearing flippers.”

He indicated the wet tracks the assassin had left on the ground.

“Small ones,” the detective pointed out.

“Specialized ones, perhaps? To make running across dry land easier? The man is supremely professional and cunning.”

“Perhaps.”

The commotion which had sprung up was abating by this time. The man who had been set upon had fallen into practically a swoon. A folded-up jacket had been placed beneath his head, and several of his workmates were attending to him. The rest were simply milling around, their fists clenched but open fear upon their faces.

Sherlock Holmes followed the tracks the whole way to the waterside, then peered out across it.

“What should we do now?” Pang asked.

The detective’s manner was particularly thoughtful – even more so than was usually the case.

“He’ll not be back again tonight,” he pronounced. “But I’ll be here again tomorrow night, and then we’ll find his true identity.”

* * *

Pang sent the limousine to his hotel next evening, and was waiting by the gates when Holmes arrived.

And the humble older man was struck with surprise when his guest climbed out. Sherlock Holmes was dressed in his traditional garb. Had donned his deerstalker and cape, just like in the Victorian illustrations everyone had seen of him. And what on earth could be the reasoning behind that?

“There is a method in my madness,” Holmes assured him.

Twilight was closing its grip across the entire town again. The narrow towers to their rear seemed to huddle closer together than before, dusk forming a mesh between them. And the water off in the direction of the typhoon wall was bled of all its colour, so that it seemed like liquid lead. Gaily-hued lanterns glowed upon the Jumbo restaurant, and a few much dimmer yellow lamps showed through portholes in the Floating Village.

No cranes were working at this hour, and the whole enclosure seemed unnaturally quiet.

Even Pang felt slightly unnerved, but his English guest showed none of that.

“Might I borrow one of those hardhats all of your men wear? Holmes asked.

But he was already wearing a hat. Why would he have any need for two? Pang hid his bewilderment, his natural politeness taking over.

“But of course,” he assented. Then he sent one of his men to fetch one.

The detective took the brightly coloured helmet, and proceeded to wander down with it to the very edge of the waterside. Almost the same spot, Pang could see, where the workman with the cigarettes had been attacked the previous night. Holmes removed the deerstalker, holding it in his left hand, and replaced it with the hardhat, which was quite incomprehensible. He practically looked like a giant cigarette himself, his body thin and shadowy, the top of his head bright orange. What exactly was he doing?

Holmes just stood there, gazing out across the water. So Pang cleared his throat.

“Should I … should we … should I fetch some of my strongest men here?”

“There’s no need for any of that. If you could back off into the shadows perhaps, the same way you did yesterday? I do not think you’ll come to any harm.”

Pang felt his larynx tightening as he did as he was told.

And after that, it was just waiting. A ship’s horn sounded, further out to sea. A motorbike went past the fence, its sound making him jump. The night densened and coalesced. The partial moon and a few stars came out.

The great detective made not the slightest move. He was like a statue, confronting the water.

Suddenly, the surface bulged. Pang sucked in a breath, then saw the Englishman was stepping backwards.

Holmes was not running. He was not in any panic. He was simply backing away calmly, giving the frogman proper room to make land.

Once again, hands and arms emerged. A shadowy figure drew itself up, harbour water sluicing from it. It stood crouched for a moment, then it took its first swift step in Holmes’ direction.

The great detective’s only reaction was to yank the orange hardhat from his head, toss it to one side, and then replace it with the deerstalker.

The approaching figure froze.

Pang’s heart was beating so violently by this juncture that it was difficult to hear anything else.

But he thought he could hear his guest calling out, “See? I am not your enemy.”

This was followed up with, “You hate the men in the orange hats, don’t you? And with reason.”

Pang was dumbstruck. What strange way was this of dealing with a violent assassin?

Then his astonishment grew even greater, because Holmes was gesturing to him.

“Come here, Simon. You will not be harmed.”

Was he serious? Mr Pang had to be called several times before he dared to step out of the shadows.

Very tentatively, he approached Holmes’ side. And the thin moonlight gradually revealed more of the crouching figure.

Utter dumbfoundment overtook the owner of the docks. There was no wetsuit he could see. There was no mask!

Standing in front of him was the etiolated figure of a teenaged Chinese boy, completely naked. His skin was as colourless as a fish’s belly. His eyes were large and glassy and his mouth was slack. He had only a few thin snaggles of hair on his head, but they appeared to run halfway down his back. His ribs poked through the flesh around his chest, his stomach section almost hollow. His arms and legs, nonetheless, looked extremely sinewy and strong.

And he had some kind of wound on either side of his scrawny neck.

Then refreshed horror gripped Pang, because he could see the wounds were moving.

This baleful figure stared at them another second. Then it turned away, fled back to the water, and was gone in an explosion of ripples.

Pang felt himself becoming faint. A firm hand steadied him.

“Easy, now,” he heard Holmes say. “It can all be explained.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, they were sitting in Pang’s office, the front wall of which was glass and showed most of the docks, most of the span of water. Work was continuing as normal down there. The Goliath of Aberdeen was preparing to set sail.

Holmes had found a blanket and thrown it around his host’s shoulders, since Mr Pang was trembling from shock. He had then fetched hot tea from a nearby machine, even offered to top it up with a little brandy from a flask he’d brought along, but Pang had refused that.

“I still cannot believe the evidence of my own eyes,” the man was saying.

“But the evidence is accurate, and so you must.”

Holmes sat down opposite him, folding both his hands together.

“That poor creature must have been born in the Floating Village. You said it yourself that many of its denizens are birthed and die there, never once touching dry land. I myself observed them swimming in the bay and fetching its water for bathing. And they have lived that way for generations? Hardly surprising, then, that eventually a new mutation would come along. A human being who had no use for dry land whatsoever. Yes, a baby boy with gills.”

“In our modern culture, he would be a mighty curiosity, for certain. But he would be cared for nonetheless. But not amongst the Tanka. We have already seen demonstrated how deeply, primitively superstitious those tribespeople are. Such a child would have been regarded by them with abject horror, as the work of evil spirits perhaps. And so in short, they’d have discarded him. They would have thrown him overboard.”

“But he’d have survived that,” Pang pointed out, his nerves starting to calm.

“Exactly. But what a miserable existence. Ejected from your family and home at such a very early age. Schooled in not the slightest way in human niceties, and forced to eke out your years as an orphaned animal might. He must have learned extremely quickly to keep himself hidden. Able to breathe underwater in a bay as large as this one, that would not have been much of a problem.

“And so he grew into a teenager. A scrawny one who could not speak, but with powerful limbs from all that swimming. I noticed the first time I saw him – even in silhouette – that he was not wearing an air bottle on his back. I noticed too that the tracks he left were not from rubber flippers. They had uneven lines and whorls, were prints. As well as gills, the fellow has webbed feet. And he has lived out there, quite solemnly but peaceably, until two months ago.”

Both of Pang’s eyebrows had come up.

“Until the men with orange hardhats came along. And your people destroyed his home.”

The Goliath of Aberdeen sounded its mighty horn.

“You said you had to dredge part of the bay and deepen it to allow that ship access. You told me that you brought up a great deal of tangled wreckage from the bottom. That was where the boy was living, until your actions drove him out.”

“But how could I have had any idea …?” Pang stammered.

“You couldn’t,” Holmes said flatly. “But the plain fact is, the boy is motivated by blind anger. He seeks revenge. He is an almost primal being, so he will not stop until the matter is resolved, until you make amends.”

Sherlock Holmes put his elbows on the desk between them, and rested his chin on both his knuckles.

“When I first saw you, I observed that you were a good Christian man. So tell me, what do you suppose is the good, Christian thing to do?”

* * *

By crack of dawn, Pang had all his tugboats far out in the harbour. He and the detective stood together on the quayside, watching as they worked. They were dropping large tangles of debris into the grey water – tangled girders, rusted frames and even some large metal shipping crates. They were depositing them all in the same spot, far away from the route that the Goliath used, and buoys were being moored in place to warn off other shipping.

“Do you think he’ll recognise it as a brand new dwelling place?” Pang asked.

“He has survived this long, so he is not without a crude kind of intelligence,” Holmes answered.

“And you think that this will stop the attacks?”

“There’s no guarantee, but it ought to satisfy him.” Holmes drew in a long, deep breath of sea air. “It is our castle. It is where the heart is. Every creature needs a home, and is quite miserable without one.”

He had not intended them to – had only meant them as a casual remark – but the words he had just spoken, they resounded through the great detective’s thoughts. His own words seemed to actually wound him.

He looked around at the foreign skyline, the clustered junks, the Chinese script on banners above the restaurant, and it struck him forcefully that he himself was very far from home.

And since he considered his true home to be not merely a city but a bygone age, he realised that he always would be.

THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED

“Bees, you say?” Sherlock Holmes could scarcely mask the plain exasperation in his tone. “I am a consulting detective, sir, not pest control.”

His host – ex-Colonel Harris Masterton – went flushed about the cheeks at that, and looked unsure how to reply. So Holmes took in his new surroundings.

The Gold Valley Safari Lodge was in the deepest heart of Kenya. There were no towns of any size around here for at least a hundred miles. Acres of African bush spread out around him for as far as the eye could see – which was not too far, admittedly, because it was already night.

In the absence of any light-pollution, the sky was a jewel-studded, velvet canopy above him. Holmes could make out several major constellations, although they were not in their usual places. Indeed, the moon itself – newly risen – looked like it was lying on its side, resembling a pale and slightly pinkish gondola adrift on a sea of glittering blackness.

Holmes had never been in this part of the world before.

Somewhere off in the far distance, he could hear a lion roar. And it set the fine hairs on his neck prickling gently.

He and Masterton were sitting across from each other at a glass-topped table on the broad veranda of the lodge. The space around them was constructed of hardwood and bamboo, and the same thing went for the whole building. Holmes had come here, landing at Nairobi and then travelling the remainder of the journey in a considerably smaller plane, after numerous pleas for help, each of them promising an excellent fee. The details of the case had not been properly spelled out but, living for as long as he had done, Holmes was troubled by a constant need for money, and could not afford to think of turning down the fine sum that was being offered.

Bees, though? What was he supposed to prove … that they were being motivated by a lust for making honey?

Harris Masterton – in his sixties, burly, florid-faced and with a reddened nose – cleared his throat and then attempted to explain things better.

“It’s the way that they’re behaving, Mr Holmes. They only go for hunters.”

And seeing as he had come so far to be here, Holmes took it on himself to listen patiently while his new host outlined the situation.

The Gold Valley Lodge had been in business since the 1930s. Holmes had already been inside the lobby and the sitting room, and seen the framed photographs there. One was of Ernest Hemingway. Another was of the abdicated King and Wallis Simpson. And there were not merely photographs, but mounted heads of every large wild animal that this continent had to offer. The place had been a bona fide hunting lodge in earlier stages of its incarnation.

“Very little call for that, these days,” Masterton grumbled. “Most of the people that we get these days, they want to shoot wild animals, for sure. But only with a camera.”

Holmes was glad to hear that. He could not see any slightest logic in the act of ending some poor creature’s life purely for the sake of the act, the thrill of it. In fact, it struck him as barbaric.

“But you do still get the occasional enthusiast?” he hazarded.

And Masterton brightened slightly. “Yes, indeed! Rich men, mostly. You’d be surprised what some of them are willing to pay for the chance of bagging just a common buffalo.”

“A lot of rich men tend to be quite ruthless types,” Holmes pointed out, “more in touch than most with their animal instincts.”

Which took Masterton slightly aback. He absorbed what the detective had said, and then peered at Holmes slantwise, perhaps beginning to suspect that he was dealing with some kind of anarchist.

“If you say so. But the fact is, since the end of last year, that side of the business has gone totally pear-shaped. And the reason is the bees. They’ve begun attacking every hunter we try to take out.”

There had been four of them so far. A Cypriot billionaire. A Saudi oil-sheik. The owner of a large American chain of discount stores. And a lord of Sherlock Holmes’ own realm, a familiar figure to the readers of the society pages. Holmes had come across that item in the news. The unfortunate fellow had been stung halfway to death and was, apparently, still recovering.

He found his interest rising gradually as Masterton outlined the rest of the details.

“Am I to understand they leave the others completely alone?”

“The snappers and the gawpers? Yes, exactly. No least harm has come to anyone we’ve taken out into the bush, except the ones with rifles.”

Holmes turned that piece of information over very solemnly. He tried to examine it from whatever angle that he could, but every single time he found himself being forced back to the same conclusion. And it became plain to his way of thinking that the adage he had always worked by remained the correct one: ‘When you have eliminated all that is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Which meant that …?

Masterton was staring at him fixedly, obviously wondering what he was taking such a long time over.

So Sherlock Holmes looked up at him and smiled a thin, dry smile.

“Then it’s obvious that these bees of yours … they are under the control of some form of intelligence.”

* * *

There were few guests at the lodge at this time of the year. They were entering the rainy season, which meant the herd animals no longer congregated round the waterholes, and so the predators that hunted them were more widely dispersed and much harder to find.

Holmes was given the most comfortable room. There was a huge soft bed with a mosquito net, a bamboo headboard, a dresser and a nightstand of the same material, and even a drinks cabinet, from which the great detective took a shot of rum before retiring. It still took him a good long while to fall asleep. What he’d told Masterton – that strange conclusion he had reached – played heavily on his mind. There was no other explanation that made any sense, and he was quite certain of that. But how could what he’d arrived at be true?

He finally sank into a fitful doze, only to be woken with a savage jolt an hour later by a curious sound. At first, he was quite certain that it was the murmur of a massive swarm of bees approaching. But that turned out to be only the product of his slumber-addled brain. A downpour had begun outside the lodge. The noise that he could hear was merely heavy raindrops on the roof.

He emerged next morning reasonably refreshed, to that smell of wholesome cleanliness that always comes after a prolonged rainfall. Birds were screeching in the trees, and he could hear the raucous chattering of a troop of monkeys some way off.

Masterton was back on the veranda, cooking breakfast on a wood-fuelled griddle. Helping him was a tall African fellow who Holmes had not met until this point.

Masterton looked up at him as he emerged, and grinned.

“Slept well, Mr Holmes?”

“Reasonably so.”

“You haven’t met our Jomo yet, now have you? Jomo Lewu. He’s the best tracker we have here, and I’m putting him with you.”

Jomo stepped forwards, extending a hand. He was a handsome Kenyan in what looked like his late twenties, and had the air of being measured and polite in everything he undertook.

“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Holmes.”

By his way of speaking and his accent – which was slightly British – Holmes deduced this was an educated man. Yet he was dressed in a threadbare short-sleeved shirt, a pair of ragged cut-off denim shorts, and sandals, and looked like no more than an ordinary local. Holmes shook his offered hand, and was surprised by the strength of the returning grasp.

“You’re from around here?”

Jomo nodded. “From a village about ten miles to the north. But what else can you tell about me, Mr Holmes? I would, frankly, be quite fascinated to hear your deductions.”

Sherlock realised that he was being challenged in a mild and slightly teasing fashion, and rose to the bait.

“You are unmarried – that much is plain. But my guess is that you won’t be for much longer. You’re not afraid of hard physical labour – I felt a few small calluses when we shook hands. And you might well have been born here, but you’ve done a bit of travelling since. My best guess would be, a sojourn at some university in one of your larger cities first.”

“Yes – Nairobi.”

“And then, by your manner of inflection … another few years spent studying in England?”

“Oxford,” Jomo grinned. “I don’t like blowing my own trumpet, but … a Masters in Ecology.”

“This is just a stop-gap job for you, then?”

“No, sir. Even Oxford was too big a city for me, and I couldn’t wait to get back here. I feel that I can breathe here, in a way that I can nowhere else.”

“He’s taking over management of the lodge when I retire,” Masterton added, rather happily. “Got some interesting ideas for the place, all of them too new-fangled for the likes of me.”

They settled down to eat their breakfast: bacon, eggs, fried bread and mango juice. Flies buzzed about them and the temperature began to soar. Jomo stared at Holmes worriedly while the great detective re-explained the peculiar conclusion he had come to.

“I’ve thought that myself a few times. But, Mr Holmes, how could it possibly be?”

The detective swallowed the last portion of an egg, then wiped the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin before replying.

“That is what I’m being paid to find out, I’d suppose. And I’m relying on your help.”

The younger man looked not in the least bit intimidated by those words. No, quite the opposite, in fact.

* * *

Within another half an hour, they were bouncing out across the bush in a brand-new, open-backed Land Rover. Holmes had borrowed a pith helmet which had been on display in the sitting room, since they were only at the top edge of the rainy season, and the sunlight beating down upon the landscape was intense. The African wilderness was far less full of life during the day than it had been last night. Except that – Holmes supposed – the life was still around, but it was largely sheltering from the heat.

The tyres of their vehicle threw up clouds of dust. They were following a narrow, rutted track, going past low scrub and tall grasses at first. But then a tree line came in sight.

“Look!” Jomo exclaimed.

He let the Land Rover idle to a halt, although he was careful not to switch the engine off. Holmes followed the young man’s gaze, and saw what he was looking at. Halfway off towards the trees, a white rhinoceros was grazing. And presumably a female, since it had a calf nearby.

“Good Lord,” he murmured. “It looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a Chieftain tank.”

But he was still quite amazed by the spectacle, and wished he’d brought along a camera.

Jomo appeared to read his mind. The fellow reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a plastic disposable one.

“I always have a couple with me, since somebody nearly always forgets to bring along his own,” he told the great detective. “With the compliments of the house.”

Holmes was supposed to be at work here and not on vacation. But he couldn’t resist taking a dozen snaps of the great beast. And another eight snaps when a trio of tall giraffes wandered by.

“Is there any specific place where these bees struck?” he asked Jomo carefully, once he was done.

His companion’s head went nodding off in the direction of the trees. “Over there.”

“Well, we’d better go there, then.”

Could he hear the humming of the swarm again? No, it was merely a low, almost subliminal purr being put out by their vehicle’s engine. Holmes could feel his throat tightening as they approached the tree line, nonetheless. His sinews tightened and the inside of his mouth went dry. He might be immortal, but was not immune to pain. He had been stung by bees and wasps several times during the course of his long life. And the thought of a great multiplicity of those sensations …

But he did the best he could to put that right out of his mind. He’d already been told, hadn’t he? The swarm only attacked huntsmen.

The woodland that they were approaching was a quarter of a mile in width. It was impossible from this vantage point to tell how deep it ran. It stood on the savannah like some dark green boat adrift upon a yellow-brownish ocean. And as their truck drew up to its edge, Holmes could see how dense the foliage was.

“We can’t go any further in the truck,” Jomo told him.

He was already climbing down, and Holmes followed his example, waiting while the fellow strapped a pistol round his belt.

“Only for shooting into the air,” Jomo explained. “The worst I’m going to do with this is scare a leopard.”

“Then I take it that you don’t approve of killing animals?” Holmes enquired as he started following him into the relatively cooler shade of the trees.

Jomo shrugged. “We all do that thing. Who knows what we squashed on the way here? We all have to eat, and by the way that you took breakfast I am sure you are no vegetarian. It’s the natural way of things.”

“But killing just for sport?” Holmes pressed him.

The shrug he got this time was smaller, lighter.

“Harris is something of a creature of habit, and he’s hunted all his life. His clients come here almost every year – at least, they used to – and are friends of his.”

“He was with them when these attacks occurred?”

“Except for one occasion.” Jomo shuddered slightly as a memory took hold. “I was with the sheik.”

“And … were you or your employer stung at all?”

“Not once.”

Which flabbergasted Holmes. It seemed to him not merely remarkable but entirely unbelievable. How could any swarm of bees attack only one man, and ignore another who – presumably – was standing nearby? It went contrary to everything he knew of both nature and logic.

On the other hand, he had read a good while back that certain scents and pheromones were capable of attracting the attention of the insect world. So maybe the solution lay in that direction? Were there human machinations behind this phenomenon?

They began wending their way through the thick primeval forest. Jomo tried to pick the easiest route, but twigs and narrow branches – some of them thorn-bearing – grasped at them as they progressed. Holmes did not enjoy that, but he took it like an Englishman, carefully unsnagging his garments whenever they became caught up.

“You’ve searched here for a nest?” he asked. And couldn’t help but notice that his own tone had become extremely muted in this shadowy and dismal place.

“A dozen times, and more,” Jomo nodded. “I know exactly what to look for. But I couldn’t even find a single bee.”

Holmes could see precisely what he meant. There were insects in these woods aplenty. Midges and mosquitoes – yes, great swirling clouds of them. Loudly humming blowflies. Ants and earwigs on the ground. But he could catch no sign of anything larger, and could hear no noticeable buzzing. Where did this swarm come from, then, and where exactly did it go?

A thin but very brightly coloured snake began to slither past them. Holmes and his companion both went very still, and the serpent ignored them.

“It’s the same with most things in the natural world,” Jomo opined, once that it was gone. “You leave them alone – they do the same thing back.”

Holmes had always found that the best way of leaving nature alone was to rent a hotel room in a big city, switch on the TV – preferably to a show involving Star Trek – and leave the whole ghastly business of feeding and breeding to resolve itself. But he decided not to mention that. He couldn’t help but long, however, for the security of the Land Rover that they had left behind. This appeared to him to be no sensible kind of place for men to be on foot.

And if they did happen to come across the swarm, what recourse would they have precisely? Jomo’s six-shooter would be no use. Holmes could swat at them with his pith helmet, he supposed. Insects were not cleverer than human beings, but they were a good deal more resilient. They’d been in this world long before mankind had been a spark in evolution’s eye.

Most of his unease, however, proved to be unfounded. No insects, nor anything larger, made the slightest attempt to come at them. No great cat came rushing at them through the shadows with its fangs and claws all bared. No, the worst that he would suffer from this expedition was some very itchy bites. Holmes’ curiosity gradually overrode his other instincts, and he kept on pressing on.

Until they came, at last, to a hollow at what looked to be the centre of the woodlands. The ground until this point had been reasonably flat. But it dipped suddenly, sloping down for almost five yards before it levelled out again. Holmes peered carefully around him once they’d reached the bottom. And it was hard to be entirely certain, what with the mass of surrounding foliage. But …

“What do you suppose might have caused this?” he asked.

“I’d presume natural subsidence,” Jomo replied. “It has been here ever since I first explored this place.”

But no, Holmes thought to himself. Unless he was mistaken, this depression in the earth was fairly circular and even. A geological peculiarity of some kind. But what had that to do with the matter in question?

They searched the spot for practically an hour. Looked in the branches of every tree, into every large hole in their bark, and even into the occasional small opening in the ground. And did not find a sign of any nest, nor see a single bee go wandering by, nor hear the faintest buzzing.

A sense of relief closed over Holmes when Jomo suggested heading back. He was not sure entirely why, but there was something about this particular matter that was setting his nerves on edge rather badly. He had come across unusual and unnatural events plenty of times before. But being out here set his instincts jangling like fine wires in a strong, harsh wind. In fact, he had never felt such powerful misgivings.

And they were partially confirmed when he got back to the truck to find out that a small troop of baboons had taken up residence on its hood. He understood how dangerous these creatures could be when confronted.

He expected his companion to draw his pistol. But the only thing that Jomo did was smile again, then run forward, shouting out and clapping his strong palms together. And the creatures scattered.

* * *

A second day of intense searching produced no results whatever. Except that – during the final hours of it, while they were hunting through the very last section of woodland – Holmes and Jomo heard a shot. It came not from the surrounding trees, but from the open savannah beyond them.

Holmes glanced at his companion, and could see the look of explosive anger on the young man’s face.

“Not a hunting party,” Jomo grated, his eyes blazing. “We’re the only lodge around here. It has to be poachers.”

A second shot resounded through the branches, coming from the east.

And then a low and constant buzzing started up.

It appeared to be coming from that central crater. But it moved away from that place quickly, the sound of it thinning out as it sped in the direction of the gunshots. Indeed, it faded from Holmes’ ears after a mere few seconds.

But it was replaced – a short while later – by human voices raised in fear and anguish. There were screams, and there were wails and yelps, and even what sounded like a man’s gibbering pleas for mercy. Holmes and Jomo promptly headed off towards the hubbub.

And actually met the very swarm of bees that they’d been after, coming back the other way. They’d obviously stung the poachers to their fullest satisfaction and were heading home. Holmes and Jomo froze again and let the creatures pass by, and – although they were momentarily surrounded – they did not get in the least bit harmed.

Holmes’ fear, though, was a quite palpable thing. His heart felt just like it was in his mouth, and pumping out the taste of bile. He could not imagine anything more horrid than for this seething cloud of hymenoptera to turn around and then attack him. But he fought to remain calm and used his powers of observation. What else could he do?

African bees were notoriously ferocious. Hybrids of such creatures, over in the New World, had already stirred up panic and claimed many lives. And these ones were enormous, larger than any of the species Holmes had ever seen before. About the size of a small standard box of matches. And they were wholly black, not a hint of yellow on their bodies. They had small waving antennae, wings that made a constant crystalline blur on the forest air, and large eyes that appeared to have – they passed by his face so quickly that he could not be entirely sure – a most curious gleam in them.

Could he make out the faintest hint of greenish-blue within that shimmer? He had never seen a single bee with that colour about it, and there was nothing in the woods around them that might have produced it.

But none of these compact assassins remained still for long enough to be properly studied. And the entire mob of them was gone within a bare handful of seconds.

Holmes let out a breath – he’d kept his mouth firmly shut the whole time he had been surrounded. He gasped for air, then turned to an equally rattled Jomo and said, “We must follow them.”

From the position of the humming noise, the swarm was headed back towards the crater.

Both men went charging after them, careless of the way the wretched undergrowth tore at their clothes. Minor inconveniences were forgotten in their rush to find out where the bees were going.

But when they reached that low depression in the earth, the only thing that Holmes and his companion could do was stagger to a numb, bewildered halt.

The large black insects had entirely vanished.

* * *

“One poacher dead, and four in hospital,” the police captain for the district told them, once evening had fallen.

The carnage out on the flatlands had been so severe that Harris Masterton had had no option but to call in the authorities. After what was, to Holmes’ mind, an unreasonably long wait, two old ambulances and a police car had shown up, and the survivors and the corpse been ferried away. The captain showed no genuine sign of wanting to remain around here for much longer. This was not a criminal matter.

“From the woods, you say? I’d stay away from them, if I were you. There’s nothing else that you can do about it.”

He climbed back into his car and left. Holmes, Jomo and Masterton remained on the veranda.

“There has to be a nest,” the older man insisted. “It’s simply that it’s too well-hidden, and you haven’t found it yet.”

He was rummaging in a cool-box and produced two cans of beer. Holmes declined, opting – for want of anything better – for a small bottle of pineapple juice. And that was most probably for the best, because he needed an extremely clear head. He exchanged a wry glance with Jomo.

“I assure you, we’ve searched every inch of those infernal woods. There’s nothing there. The bees just disappeared.”

Masterton stared back at him with the most disgruntled of expressions.

“I thought you were a man of logic, Mr Holmes? So how could what you’re telling me make any sense?”

Which bothered Holmes the entire evening. And that same distress continued long into the night. He lay wide-awake in his bed, the occasional roar of a big cat or else the laugh of a hyena punctuating his dull, solemn thoughts. Masterton was right, of course: what he’d described did not add up. But what else could he believe except the evidence of his own senses? He had seen it. He had heard it.

He finally got up, crossed over to the window and stared out at the night sky.

A shooting star flashed across it, there for a brief, dazzling instant and then gone. A second one lasted a few moments longer before breaking up, and it was followed by a couple more.

A very curious, tight expression drifted across Sherlock Holmes’ features. And a strange gleam started up in his own eyes,

He returned to his mattress and lay very still there, and only someone watching him from close quarters would have realised that his eyelids were still slightly open.

* * *

He had finally dozed off, and was awoken the next morning by the sound of unfamiliar voices, talking in a language he could not make out. Holmes pulled on the dressing gown that Masterton had provided him with and went outside, to see his host and Jomo in deep conversation with none other than a pair of Masai warriors.

They were magnificent fellows, tall and powerful-looking in a lean and wiry way. They were both carrying large spears, and had red-dyed hair and strings of what looked like lion’s claws around their necks. Masterton and Jomo were chatting with them in their own guttural dialect.

“They’re from an encampment about six miles off from here,” Masterton explained. “And they know about the poachers. But they’ve been having problems of their own.”

He proceeded to explain the Masai’s strange traditions. It had once been the case that, when a boy was grown-up enough to make the passage into manhood – at about twelve or thirteen years of age – something quite extraordinary was expected of him. He was required to go out into the bush, entirely by himself, and kill a full-grown lion.

“It’s illegal these days, naturally. But some young chaps still want to give it a try. They use the pretext that the lion has been attacking their cattle.”

It was a terribly brave way for anyone so young to comport himself, certainly. But the whole thing seemed a little overblown from Sherlock Holmes’ point of view. This was his first time here though, he reminded himself. And he supposed that he ought to respect the local customs.

Except that – just a few days back – that particular custom had gone very badly wrong.

One such doughty teenager had wandered off this way. Had spotted a young male lion not far from the woods in question. He’d approached it, murder on his mind. Had raised his spear to do the deed.

And had been set on by the swarm of black bees.

He was back at the encampment by this time, being tended to by its medicine men, but the poor lad remained in a grave condition.

One of the tribesmen started speaking again, letting out a couple of brief, garbled sentences.

“They’re convinced that there’s an evil spirit at work here,” Jomo translated.

Holmes – who had encountered such beings – simply grimaced. Wouldn’t such a creature set the bees attacking just plain anyone?”

“Do they know the inside of the woods at all?” he asked.

Jomo interpreted what he had said, then nodded.

“They are familiar with the crater in it, yes?” Holmes went on. “And do they know what caused it?”

Both the Masai frowned and nodded, and then tried to talk across each other. Jomo had to sort their answers out.

“Their fathers and their grandfathers have told them of a star that fell down from the sky, some fifty years ago.”

Holmes’ eyebrows lifted very partially. “A meteor?”

“In modern parlance, yes. That’s what it had to be.”

But Jomo was looking very puzzled, not even starting to understand where there might be a relevant connection.

“Tell them that they have our prayers for the boy’s swift recovery,” Holmes said briskly.

And that was the only thing he deigned to say at all upon the subject. He had already decided not to utter another word until he was certain of his theory.

Both his hosts kept staring at him, quite askance.

“Come on, Mr Holmes,” Masterton prompted. “I can see that you’ve got something on your mind. So let us in on the big secret, won’t you?”

Holmes merely gazed back at him for an unblinking while.

And then told him, “We’re going hunting.”

* * *

“Are you sure that this is wise?” Jomo asked as they went bouncing back in the direction of the woods.

Masterton was at the wheel of the Land Rover. Holmes and the young guide were standing in the rear section, clutching onto the back panel of the cab.

“I’m sure it’s very unwise,” Holmes responded, smiling at him rather tightly.

“Then why do it?”

“It’s the only way to solve this case. There is no other option.”

Still, the trepidation of before came back to him, redoubled, as the stretch of woodland began growing in his vision. He had only a vague idea of what was causing all of this. He’d discerned that it was some manner of controlling intellect from the very start. But of what nature, how profound and how perceptive, he could not be sure. And his very survival now depended on such issues.

He was not unarmed this time. He’d brought along – Masterton had chosen it for him – the most powerful hunting rifle in the Gold Valley Safari Lodge. It was a weighty monster of a thing, and his host had assured him it could bring down anything short of a wild bull elephant. In truth, such massive firepower was unnecessary. But he did not want his adversary knowing that.

Was there a degree of telepathy involved in this whole scenario? He hoped so, or else he might well prove to be undone. Holmes thought hunting thoughts. He tried to picture slaughtered carcasses, and mounted heads and other trophies. It was quite distasteful to him on one level, but he did his very best to feign primitive bloodlust just as accurately as he could.

And was completely unaware of any other form of consciousness trying to intrude upon his own. Which left him at a loss. The trees grew closer.

“Better start looking for a suitable target, then,” he said out loud.

Masterton glanced around at him like he was mad, but kept on driving.

There was a small herd of zebras nearby, quite delightful to Holmes’ eye. But he drove such notions out of his head, slipped the heavy rifle off his shoulder and took aim … only to have his attention diverted by a pair of giraffe wandering through the background of the area that he was pointing at. His head came up again. He studied them intently. Maybe those?

But Jomo tapped him on the shoulder and then pointed up ahead. Ah yes, absolutely perfect. The same female rhino with her calf that they had seen their first day out was standing there.

“Get me closer in,” Holmes told his driver.

Masterton grunted sombrely, but then complied.

Who in his right senses would harm any creature that had a dependent offspring? It amounted to a double-murder. But Holmes skirted that issue carefully and tried to cleanse it from his mind. The truck drew up some fifty yards away from the great wrinkled beast, which showed no sign that it had even noticed its arrival. Holmes aimed down the barrel of the gun, getting the rhino in his sights.

He put every other idea out of his head save for this one. A cold determination to kill that rhinoceros. The mental picture of its great dead body lying on the dried brown earth. Taking its head as a reminder of the act. And perhaps turning its big feet into ashtrays as a final insult.

His eyelids narrowed and he gritted his teeth. His breath became uneven and his heart began to beat far quicker. He thumbed back the hammer of the rifle, and his finger tightened slightly on the trigger.

A low humming sound came wafting to his ears.

Holmes turned immediately to the two men who’d accompanied him.

“Get out of here, both of you!” he shouted. “Out of the truck! And don’t take any weapons with you!”

Jomo and Masterton looked immediately concerned. Neither of them appeared particularly willing to leave the great detective to his fate. They wanted to stand by him. But what earthly good would that achieve?

The older man’s face coloured. And his African assistant had on an expression like he’d bitten into sour fruit. But both chaps did as they were asked, clambering down from the Land Rover and retreating backwards.

Holmes forgot about them, swivelling around to face the woodlands.

And as first, it looked like nothing unpleasant might happen. There was only that approaching sound. But then a strange shape burst out from between the trees, if it could genuinely be called a ‘shape’ at all.

It was altering its dimensions and scale with every passing second. And could have been taken, at first glance, for an extremely low-lying and very thick black cloud. Except that it was no such thing, and Sherlock understood that only too well. It was composed of thousands of winged black bodies.

He held himself up very straight, ignoring his raging pulse and the thick, hard knot of gristle that had formed inside his throat. He tried to let his intellect take over and control his actions. Only … what if, on this one occasion, he had got it wrong? Once such an attack had been launched, could it even be recalled? Lord Almighty, but he didn’t even know.

He tried to imagine himself as a footsoldier, facing down an attack by the Mahdi’s howling Dervishes. And only succeeded a little. By the saints, this was far harder than he’d thought.

Holmes waited until the swarm was halfway across the savannah to him, and then held the rifle high and pulled the trigger hard, three times. There were no accompanying explosions.

“You see?” he yelled. “It isn’t even loaded! I had no genuine plans to kill that beast!”

The cloud of insects kept on coming, and he felt his heart beat even faster. Perspiration sprang up on his lip.

“If you harm me for no reason,” he called out, “then aren’t you just as bad as any hunter?”

And at first, he thought that he was done for nonetheless. The swarm of bees came right up to the truck and then surrounded him like some dense pall of writhing smoke. Holmes went rigid, waiting for the pain to come. But felt none whatsoever. Not a single stinger was so much as even brushing up against his flesh. But he was still unable to relax.

The swarm was churning all about him. Its sound filled his head so loudly that it felt like it might burst. The world beyond the horde of bees – the plains and the trees and the two men he had come here with – was muddled, blurry, indistinct. Holmes did his very best to maintain his composure, but he couldn’t help but notice he was shaking. These creatures could set upon him any second. There was nothing he could do to stop them.

He held the rifle over the side of the truck and let it drop.

“You see?” he murmured underneath his breath, genuinely afraid again to open up his mouth too much. “I have no murderous intent. I simply thought that we might meet?”

Was his mind being examined? His words and actions being measured? The detective simply wasn’t sure. The bees kept whirling round him, so that every passing second felt like an eternity.

“Mr Holmes?” Jomo shouted out, fear written across his handsome face.

His employer was the same. But Holmes ignored the pair of them. The only thing that he could do was wait, now. He was dealing – and he knew it – with an intellect quite different from his own.

The bees abruptly turned away as one, and began streaming back into the forest. And Sherlock Holmes’ consciousness … it seemed to suddenly rise up, departing from his corporeal body. He was not exactly sure how that had happened.

But it followed them.

* * *

An out-of-the-body experience. Jack London had described such things, and Madame Blavatsky. Holmes had experienced a great number of strange events, but never one like this before.

He was no longer aware of his own heartbeat, since he’d left that thing behind him. His nerves were not trembling, and there was no sweat dripping down his top lip any more. He had become reduced to his essential form, his consciousness and nothing more.

Holmes felt himself calming as he followed the dark swarm. Tree trunks and low branches flashed by. He was aware of the variety of tiny sounds inside the woodlands, dead leaves crinkling and midges holding low, whispering conversations with each other. And he was very conscious of the way the sunlight trickled through the leafy canopy above and made strange patterns on the ground. A massive royal blue butterfly went past, and he could feel the tiny gusts of wind the flapping of its wings made.

Then he reached the wide depression at the centre of the woods. Up ahead of him, a shining, hollow looking, greenish-blue disc had appeared in mid-air. Could it be some kind of portal?

Yes indeed, it turned out that that was the case. Because the entire swarm of bees began to pour inside it, disappearing.

And the very next instant, Sherlock Holmes was doing the same.

He appeared to lose all sensation for a moment. And when his sight and hearing returned, Holmes found himself inside of what looked like some kind of cavern. Except that the walls were a regular and geometric shape – a large dodecahedron. And there were strange figments of greenish-blue light flowing across them in constant streams. Mathematical symbols, perhaps? They could indeed be that, but he had never once in all his days seen anything quite like them.

A peculiar sound came to his ears, and it was no longer the humming of the swarm. The bees were still present, surely, but they were no longer on the wing. They had landed on the strangely lit-up walls, were moving across them, and had the lazy air of being finally at home.

No, the sound that he was hearing was mechanical, or perhaps electrical. A dull, low-pitched throbbing, like a pump at work. But Holmes felt certain that it was not that.

“You are Sherlock Holmes,” remarked a voice inside his head, without the slightest warning.

And it was not like any human voice, since it was utterly dispassionate and devoid of inflection.

Holmes swung round in a full circle, but could not see who the speaker was. But perhaps the words were coming from this cavern all around him. So he steeled himself.

“And you are?” he enquired gravely.

“I am Other,” said the voice, and you could hear the capital letter.

Holmes absorbed that.

“Other than what?” he asked, since it appeared to be the most logical question.

“Other than you. Other than human. Other than organism. Other than flesh. Other.”

“You are a creature from the stars?”

There was the briefest pause while his new host turned that over.

“From another galaxy. And I am part machine.”

“You came down with the meteorite?”

“My craft. It is buried in the soil.”

“And you’ve been doing what precisely, these past fifty years?”

“Observing. That is mostly all that I can do, since my field of influence is limited at the moment. But I can see most things on this world. And I have been watching you.”

Holmes felt himself becoming anxious again, at that idea. The very notion that some alien presence had been looking at him like some germ under a microscope …?

“Only me?” he asked the being.

“No.”

“All of us, then. And what conclusions have you come to?”

“What do you suppose? You have lived here long enough to know the plain truth, Sherlock Holmes. Humankind is beautiful and ugly, splendid and savage, generous and cruel, a living contradiction. I have been to many worlds, and not encountered this before.”

“Which explains what you have done exactly how?”

“I do not reach my conclusions quickly. No, not in your terms. My life is too prolonged for such haste to be necessary. But I’ve finally decided I must do something about this world. I have to teach your race that some actions are wrong.”

“Like killing for no reason?” Holmes continued gently. His whole face would have tightened, then relaxed, if he’d had one. “For sport. Or for criminal profit. Or to prove yourself an adult.”

“Yes. The bees are useful in that regard. Not overly intelligent, but they work well in unison. And they have accepted me as their new queen since their original ruler died.”

Holmes felt the need to pace around a bit, but could not do so. He could only float there, trying to make sense of Other’s words.

“And what earthly good do you think this will achieve? A few hunters and poachers harmed? A Masai boy who knew no better?”

“I am merely – how do you put it? – flexing my muscles, Mr Holmes. Testing the extent of my powers here, and finding out what I am capable of. I told you, I do not work quickly in your terms. But who knows? In the fullness of time, I might even be able to put a stop to wars.”

* * *

And Sherlock Homes was still trying to take in the full enormity of these words when he returned to his own body. He lost his balance and his vision blurred. His knees were weakening, his body sliding downward. But he grabbed hold of the side of the truck, levering himself back up and then panting.

The dizziness passed and his eyesight steadied. Masterton and Jomo had both hurried over to the truck and were peering at him curiously.

“You were staring into empty space for a few seconds, but your lips were moving,” Jomo told him, looking anxious.

“So, then?” Masterton intruded. “Did you find anything out?”

Holmes rubbed at the side of his head, then waited until his breathing had steadied. But then he paused a few more seconds after that had been achieved, choosing his reply extremely carefully.

“I think that I can say, without a shadow of a doubt,” he muttered, “hunting season’s well and truly off.”

VERMILLION MOON

“Not dead, you say?” asked Holmes.

Inspector Willem van Heuten eyed the great detective sadly.

“Perhaps it would be better that they were. They have no mind left. A philosopher might say that they have been robbed of their souls.”

“All men?”

“Indeed.”

“All married men?”

“Except for one of them.”

“And all in positions of some prominence?”

“Two parliamentary politicians. Three local councillors. Two journalists of note. And – I am afraid to say – my own superintendent of police, my direct superior.”

“Might I see him?” Holmes asked.

“Of course.”

They got into van Heuten’s car and kept on driving till they reached a fairly nondescript outer suburb of Amsterdam. There, they went along the calm, quiet streets until a hulking building came in sight. It was so grey it seemed to partially absorb the sunlight, and was perfectly rectangular and featureless, save that it was dotted all over with tiny square windows. As they drew up to the place, Holmes could see that each window was covered with a metal grille.

Security was strict. They were made to pass through a metal detector, and were patted down by uniformed guards, one of whom then led them to Superintendent Hoek’s cell.

“This is a maximum security psychiatric hospital,” Holmes pointed out. Which was stating the obvious, and he was painfully aware of that. “Has your old boss become … dangerous in any manner?”

“Not yet, to my knowledge. But the rest who have been so afflicted have certainly gone that way.”

This was a most peculiar case. Sherlock Holmes had so far been able to make neither head nor tail of it. Which was why he’d asked to be brought here. There was no substitute for first-hand knowledge.

Except that – when they arrived at the man’s cell – it turned out that they were not his only visitors. A woman was already in the room whom he presumed was Pieter Hoek’s good wife. She was a woman in her late fifties, lined around the face but still very attractive, with long blonde hair and a slender, supple figure. She was crouched in front of her poor husband, who was on the edge of a narrow metal bed, sitting bolt upright.

Van Heuten made to intervene, but the detective held him back. Let’s simply watch a while, he told the inspector with his eyes.

“Pieter. Pieter?” the woman was murmuring. “Please, come back to me.”

Her hands went gently to his face. Her narrow fingertips brushed down along his slack cheeks with the delicacy of butterflies. That got no response at all, not so much as the briefest glance in her direction, and her pale eyes consequently brimmed with glittering tears.

Pieter Hoek had to be the same age as his partner at the very least. He was a large man with broad shoulders and massive hands, and looked more like an ageing boxer than any publicly employed official. His face might have been florid once, but was now entirely motionless and pale. And here was something curious that Holmes took note of straight away … he wore his facial hair in a remarkably old-fashioned style. He had a huge, drooping moustache – no beard. And long, luxuriant sideburns, called ‘muttonchops’ on the far side of the Atlantic.

The man made not the slightest move, however much his poor wife tried to coax him. His hands were rested on his knees, and not so much as a finger twitched. His body was as rigid as a mannequin’s, and his face utterly devoid of expression. His eyes – which were blue but very dark – were staring off into the far distance, except there was no distance in this tiny cell he was incarcerated in. So he was staring off at nothing.

“And he’s been like this since he was first discovered?” Holmes whispered to van Heuten.

“He was standing up and wandering about, but vacantly, in no particular direction. People thought at first that he had been struck on the head.”

“And was any physical injury of that sort revealed?”

“None whatsoever.”

Sherlock Holmes sucked air in through his teeth a moment.

“Where precisely was he found?”

“On Rokin.”

Which was both a canal and the street beside it.

“Very near the Red Light District, then.”

“Yes. What are you thinking, sir?”

But Holmes held back from commenting any further. It was far too early to jump to conclusions.

What was unfolding in front of him, though, was a horribly familiar picture. A powerful bull of a man, but getting closer to the verge of slipping into old age and infirmity. A doting, loyal wife who must have been a remarkable beauty back in earlier days. His heart felt heavy as he watched her try to heal her husband with her touch. When Pieter had been sane, he must have loved her just as much. But even very strong men can be rather weak on some occasions.

He decided to try out one last line of enquiry, even though he knew that he was grasping at straws somewhat.

“There are many so-called ‘coffeeshops’ – drug dens – around the Red Light District. Was he tested for such substances?”

“Of course,” van Heuten came back at him, a little testily. “And no slightest trace of narcotics was found. The superintendent was enormously old-fashioned when it came to things like drugs.”

“A man of virtue, then?”

“Why, absolutely so.”

“A man of solid values?”

“Yes!”

“As Edwardian as his moustache and sideburns.”

“What are you driving at, Mr Holmes?”

“Have others who’ve been so affected been incarcerated in this place? I’d imagine so. Show me a violent one.”

Willem van Heuten gawped at Holmes as though the great detective had suddenly grown a second head. He personally was a fit-looking man in his mid-forties, blond and very formally and neatly dressed, so that he looked more like a businessman than a policeman. Holmes did not particularly like him.

“Don’t you even want to try and talk with Pieter? Or his wife?”

Holmes smiled dryly and lifted a single eyebrow.

“I’ll not get a word from him, and we both know it. As for talking with his wife, in the first place she knows nothing more than we do. And in the second place, she is already being caused enough distress.”

“Do you suspect—?”

“I suspect nothing, inspector. I expect almost anything. It saves me the discomfort of being unpleasantly surprised. I’d like to see a victim who’s turned violent, and right now. If you would be so helpful as to lead the way?”

And Holmes batted the back of one palm at the man, as though he were fending off some annoying insect. Inspector van Heuten went red in the face when the great detective did that, but he then complied.

* * *

They went into the subterranean depths of the hulking grey building, past numerous locked gates, and this time a guard stayed with them the whole way. Shrieks and howls and other noises, many of them unidentifiable as human, began drifting to their ears. Holmes’ reaction was to smile mildly and comment, “Maybe they have Hannibal Lecter down here?”

Which got him an amazed look from van Heuten.

“You’re familiar with such a modern character?”

This was not a man who stretched his intellect to its fullest, now was he? Holmes’ smile became a little bitter.

“I may hail from the Victorian age, inspector, but I remain aware of the world around me, greatly changed though it might be. I read, and I watch the movies, and am well aware of Mr Harris’ most famous creation. And there’s nothing new about him in the slightest. He is Mephistopheles.”

Van Heuten’s jaw dropped open.

“For a start,” the detective continued, “in the books, he has reddish irises, and how many humans do you know of who possess that quality? But more pertinently, he is utterly vicious, and yet on the surface cultured, charming, almost likeable, and terribly persuasive. When Miss Starling approaches him for advice, he contrives to make a bargain with her. He will give her what she wants, namely knowledge. In return for which, she has to explain to him what genuinely makes her tick. He wants a piece of her soul, in other words. He is Old Nick.”

“I … never saw it that way,” the inspector mumbled.

“And why does that not surprise me?” was Sherlock’s response. “Aha, it appears we have arrived.”

A second guard had turned up and, between them, they were undoing the several locks on a heavy metal door which had a tiny round glass observation porthole.

“Who is it that we are visiting?” Holmes asked the nearest guard.

“Jan Derrek,” came the response. “Poor son of a bitch.”

“A local councillor of some repute,” van Heuten explained. “He’s the first one who was found in this state.”

“Was he discovered on Rokin?”

“Two streets up from there, in the early hours of the morning.”

“A pattern emerges, then,” Holmes nodded.

But if he was going to say anything more, it was cut short by the most frightful guttural wailing. As soon as the door to his cell was prised open, the man inside began making noises as if some pack of wild beasts were making a meal of his feet. There were screams and there were shrieks. There were gurgles and strange gibbering sounds. Holmes had never heard any single human being in such absolute distress. He steeled himself and peered inside, and the sight that met his stern gaze was remarkably unpleasant.

This was a middle-aged man of the same generation as van Heuten. He was thin and looked to be tall, but was sitting down upon the padded floor, which was no wider than ten feet by ten. A straightjacket was restricting him … stopping him from harming himself as much as anybody else, Holmes guessed. He was clad from the waist down in institutionally green pyjama bottoms, and his feet were bare. But it was his face that most shocked the great detective.

It was unshaven, and its head of hair was as wild as a circus clown’s. If there’d been any colour to its brow or cheeks, no slightest hint remained by now. It looked more like a pencil drawing of a human face than an actual one, the features stark white and the shadows in it dark and deep. The eyes were very wide, distended pupils black and glittering. And the mouth was stretched as wide open as it could possibly project, and kept emitting frightful, high-pitched utterances.

“Lord alive!” was all that Holmes could breathe.

Van Heuten nodded. “It’s as if that painting by Munch has come to life, isn’t it?”

He was obviously trying to glean some intellectual respect from Holmes, but he was not succeeding.

“When did he become like this?”

“About three days after he was first brought in.”

“And what was he doing before he was brought in?”

“He told his wife that he had a late meeting.”

“And did he?” Holmes asked, after he had paused a moment.

“So far as we’ve been able to discover … no.”

Holmes stood in the cell’s doorway, crouched down, bending from the knees, and peered into Jan Derrek’s strangely darkened eyes. And they didn’t even flicker back in his direction. Just like Superintendent Hoek, this man was staring off into thin air, fixated by something only he could see.

“Again, he’s been tested for narcotics?” the detective asked van Heuten.

“Again, he is clean.”

“And he’s not been sedated since?”

Both of the guards shook their heads.

“Then why are his pupils so dilated?”

That was the main question he needed the answer to. But Sherlock Holmes knew he’d not find it here.

* * *

He managed to give van Heuten the slip by feigning tiredness and asking to be taken back to his hotel, which was not all that far from Rokin. But as soon as the inspector’s car had disappeared, Holmes ventured out again.

Evening was beginning to fall across the great, flat city, adding to the place’s atmosphere. Holmes had visited many national capitals, but had never come across one with such a relaxed ambience as Amsterdam possessed. There was not the frenzied bustle here that you found in New York and Hong Kong, nor the short-tempered impatience that you encountered in London, nor the aloof attitudes you came across in Paris. People here were generally calm and amiable, going about their business at a casual pace. The weather had been mild all day, and many of this city’s denizens were seated at the outdoor tables of cafés, enjoying a coffee or a beer and chatting with their neighbours. Bicycles whizzed by, their bells occasionally clanging. In the distance, he could see a flower vendor’s stall, and he could hear a barrel organ ringing out from some direction. There was a slightly ‘Old World’ feeling to the whole milieu, and he suspected he could live quite comfortably in such a place.

But then the canal, Rokin, came in sight, and he was forcibly reminded of the fate of Pieter Hoek and all the rest. It was a wide canal, its water black as tar. A few bubbles came rippling to its surface as he watched, and he momentarily wondered if there might be anything alive down there.

Except that was a fantasy that he immediately suppressed. The real solution had to have a good deal more to do with basic human nature.

All the victims had been men, middle-aged or older. All of them respectable, and all but one in a long marriage. That brought certain facts to mind back from his own Victorian times.

When he lifted his head and peered in front of him, it was the edges of the Red Light District he was looking at, except you couldn’t even tell it from this distance, since it kept its business to itself. It was probably the very oldest part of this whole city, since the walls of its high, closely gathered houses were far more begrimed with soot than those behind him. They reminded him almost of the tenements of Whitechapel, and when he approached them Holmes could feel the faintest thrill of long-remembered dread.

Finding his way across the canal, he headed down a narrow, cobbled street, only to be mildly disappointed. There was not any evidence of the world’s oldest trade round here. He was surrounded with souvenir shops, ‘coffeeshops’ – the stench of hemp and hashish wafting from them – and kebab parlours.

But then he reached the corner of the block, looked to his left, and his perspective altered. Here was the precise type of avenue that he’d been on the search for.

It was called Warmoesstraat, and had another canal – narrower than Rokin but entirely as black – down its direct centre, so that its sidewalk doubled as a towpath. There was a massive row of black bicycles parked along the nearest section of the kerb. But beyond those, he could see faint red lights.

And here – rather unfairly, to Holmes’ way of thinking – was the second thing this fine and charming old city was famous for worldwide. Why not focus on the beauty of the place, its lovely, laid-back atmosphere? But nothing captured the imagination of the general public quite so much as sex.

It could be had here quickly, easily, and for a reasonable tariff. But Holmes started to become rather unhappy and perturbed as he made his way past lit-up windows, each with a single occupant at its centre. Back in Whitechapel, in the olden days, women such as these had offered themselves openly, for sure. There had been certain streets you couldn’t walk along without being accosted. But at least they’d kept their clothes on which, in Amsterdam, was not the case.

They were in their underwear, for heaven’s sake. Which, to Holmes’ mind, was practically the same as being naked. He had been made uneasy in this way before, observing female sunbathers in their bikinis on the Caribbean isle of Santa Augustina. But whereas they had merely dressed that way for comfort, these women were … his fuddled brain searched furiously for the right way to describe it … they were advertising the wares they were selling. He had not expected anything like this, and felt dismayed.

Before he had even walked another block, he drew to a halt and lowered his head. And the following inner dialogue commenced:

Do you want to solve this case or not?

Of course you do, so pull yourself together. The world has changed massively since the olden days, and you are well aware of that. People are more open, nay, more shameless than they used to be, and you have to accept it.

Get a grip, man! These are only human bodies you are looking at. So calm down now and control yourself. Use some of those mind techniques you learned in the Far East.

Which was how the world’s greatest detective wound up in the heart of the most famous red light zone in all of Europe, breathing from his abdomen and chanting ‘Om’ under his breath. He kept on at it till his thoughts were placid and his heartbeat had decreased.

When he finally raised his head again, a strapping brunette in the filmiest of lacy lingerie was staring at him through the nearest window. She smiled when his gaze met hers, and then she raised a hand and crooked her index finger.

“You’re English?” she asked him when he came in through the door. “I’m sure you are, since I can always tell.”

And she began to pull the heavy velvet curtains at the window shut.

“There’s no need for that,” Holmes told her briskly.

She stared at him across one shoulder with an eyebrow raised.

“An exhibitionist, huh? I get a lot of that, but if the police come along they’ll bust me.”

Holmes felt himself starting to panic all over again.

“I’m not here for anything the least like that.”

“Anything like what? You haven’t told me what you want yet.”

And she completed the job of shutting the curtains.

Barely in time, Holmes remembered the photos in his jacket pocket. He had obtained them from van Heuten before they had parted. So he yanked them out, a batch of half a dozen.

“Do you want to look at porn with me?” the woman asked him.

“Good Lord, madam!” was Holmes’ furious response. “Is that all you ever think about?”

She looked perplexed and rather wary, and he saw that he had gone too far.

“I’m sorry that I snapped at you,” he explained, lifting up the palm of his free hand to calm her. “But I am not here for any business of that nature. I was simply wondering if you knew any of these men.”

And he held the photos out towards her, but her eyebrows bobbed again.

“You a cop, then?”

“No, madam, I am Sherlock Holmes.”

At which a large and knowing, cheeky grin lit up her pleasant face.

“If that’s the game you want to play, then I’m okay. You want me to be Mrs Hudson, I suppose? But it will still be sixty euros.”

* * *

Sixty euros! Sixty euros to be told precisely nothing! She had looked at all the faces he had shown her, and had not recognised a single one of them. But she had kept the money all the same. If he kept on this way down this entire street, then he would be severely out of pocket!

But at the next window that he stopped before, its occupant was not so bold. She listened to what he had to ask her, but then told him, “You want Roxie, six more windows down. She knows everything that happens on this street, and everyone who comes here.”

Once he’d followed her directions, Holmes found himself confronted with a tall blonde woman lounging on a chaise longue in her scanties. She was older than the other working girls he had encountered, still strikingly attractive, but obviously somewhere in her forties. She’d contrived to hide her age with extra applications of foundation, but her figure was more voluptuous than most of the others and there were obvious crows’ feet around the corners of her eyes. Holmes couldn’t help but wonder why she’d kept at this trade for so long. Perhaps she had no choice.

It turned out that being older made her rather wiser, though. She looked up at him through her windowpane, smiling reflexively into his face. But then her mouth dropped open with surprise – she had recognised him, maybe from the papers. A moment later, she was standing up. She went across to a hook on the back door of her room, took a silk robe from it and then pulled in on, knotting the belt at the waist.

It was a huge relief. Her expression had turned serious and concerned by the time that she was ushering him in.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes? I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,” she told him in a thick Dutch accent. “But what can I possibly do for you. You surely don’t—?”

“Of course not, my good woman.”

Unfortunately, when he showed her the six photographs, she, like the others, shook her head.

“None of them are regulars round here. But tell me, what are their professions?”

And when he explained who they were, she smiled wryly and nodded.

“It is just tourists and ordinary Joes who come here to the Red Light District. Prominent people such as these? They go elsewhere.”

“I take it that you mean to some luxurious bordello?”

There had been such establishments aplenty, after all, in Victorian London, and the great detective knew all too well of that particular trade.

“Yes, of course. They’re in precisely the same business that we are, but they dress it up a whole lot better and they charge a good deal more. Such places aren’t exactly legal here in Amsterdam, but they’re ignored.”

“And where would I find them?”

“All over the city, sir, even in the quietest suburbs.”

“Is there any way that they identify themselves?”

Roxie responded with a shrug. “They mostly look like ordinary houses. Most of them have adverts on the internet these days, but otherwise they get the majority of their clients through word of mouth.”

Which was not awfully useful, but he thanked her all the same.

One thing was for certain … he had come to the wrong place. Night was gathering fully around Sherlock Holmes as he headed out of the Red Light District, following the same path he had taken in so that he wound up back on Rokin.

It was one of the broadest avenues in all of central Amsterdam, terminating at its top end with Dam Square. The air was cooler than it had been in the daytime, and the sky could be seen clearly from this vantage point. The moon was coming up above the roofs, and Holmes could see that it was tinted red. A blood moon. Which surprised him greatly. There were various reasons for that aberration, none of which he could detect on this particular evening. Maybe the air above this city was more polluted than he had first believed, except he’d read in just this morning’s papers that the opposite was actually the case.

Across the way from him was a small Italian delicatessen, still open at this hour because it served coffee and cakes. There were no customers inside it at the moment, and so its proprietor – a thin man with an even thinner black moustache – was standing outside the front door smoking a cigarette. The man was gazing at the moon as well. Holmes went across and then engaged with him.

“The moon is red this evening, yes?”

“The moon has been red many evenings recently, signor.”

“In a continuous row?”

“Yes. It is very curious. My grandmamma, if she was still alive, she would call it a bad omen.”

“And how many nights precisely has it been this colour?”

The fellow blew smoke out, calculating the figure in his head.

“Almost for five weeks, I do believe.”

Which was the exact amount of time these awful cases of at first catatonia, and then mania, had been showing up. That was when it occurred to Holmes that the cause of this whole wretched nightmare might, not for the first time, turn out to be paranormal. But he kept his face relaxed.

“Mille grazie, signor,” he said.

* * *

The establishment that he was looking for … it could not possibly be within the boundaries of the Red Light District. He was absolutely sure of that. Each victim was a prominent and well-heeled individual, and would not risk his reputation by venturing there.

Which meant it had to be in the avenues above Rokin, not below it. For want of anything better to do, Holmes began to wander them, his sharp eyes going everywhere.

Except that they were mostly empty by this hour. There were few other late-night cafés, and few bars or restaurants that he could see, and so no reason to be here. Occasionally, a lone pedestrian would wander by, but Holmes found himself mostly on his own out on these streets.

And he so detested this way of working. Wandering these desolate sidewalks in the hope that something might show up? It was no more than a form of gambling, in which he trusted to luck and was not the least bit scientific. But he had no genuine clues to lead him to his goal, and so he kept it up.

A car door slammed at an intersection up ahead of him. A portly man had climbed out, and was now embracing a young woman who had emerged from the shadows. But he had a suitcase with him, and the car in question was a taxi with an airport pass. This was no more than a father who was visiting his grown-up daughter, and Holmes left them to it.

He passed the darkened entrance to an alleyway, and heard a girlish giggle from inside, then high-pitched voices. But an open window – brightly lit-up – overlooked the alley. It was only someone’s TV he was hearing.

An attractive woman in high heels went by him with a poodle on a leash. But were any of those things illegal? This was perfectly absurd.

Holmes raised his head to stare at the pink moon again. The rooftops were partially blocking it from where he stood, so that it appeared to him like a great bloodshot eye that might be spying on him covertly. Its reddish hue was even more pronounced than it had been when he had been standing on Rokin. So was he closer now to that which he sought? He wasn’t sure.

Another taxi drew up to the kerb a couple of blocks ahead. Two men got out this time, but they were both in silhouette. He could make out that they were not young, however, by the way they walked, the way their shoulders stooped. They said nothing to each other, made not the slightest sound, but a door swung open for them in a nearby building before drifting shut behind them.

By the time Holmes had reached it, they had disappeared. He looked up at the place, and could see nothing there out of the ordinary. This was no more than a townhouse that had been converted into separate flats, pot plants at the windows, framed prints and ornaments up against the walls beyond them. For heaven’s sake, he told himself crossly, I’m doing nothing more out here but wasting my shoe leather and my time!

He took an incurious glance at the row of nametags by the bell pushes to one side of the front door and then – nothing catching his attention – turned away.

But something was nagging at him by the time that he returned to his hotel. He wasn’t quite certain what it was but … he was missing something. There was something slightly odd that he had failed to spot. It infuriated Holmes in the manner of an itch he could not scratch. If he only had his violin to saw at, so he could gather his thoughts. Or better yet, a seven percent solution of cocaine.

But neither of those things were present in this hotel’s lobby.

Superintendent Hoek’s wife was, however

When she got up from the sofa she’d been seated on, it became obvious that she was waiting for him.

* * *

It turned out that her name was Gertrude. Her voice was as soft and refined as her features, and she was smartly dressed, with not the slightest hint of flashiness or poor taste. Holmes bowed to her politely, and they both sat down. Why exactly had she come here when her husband was in such a state?

“He’s getting worse,” she told him when he asked. “He’s getting violent and unmanageable, like all the rest.”

Her face was a mask of woe, her pale eyes glittering on the verge of tears, and yet she had the strength of will to keep herself from breaking down completely. When he’d first seen her with her stricken husband, it had been obvious that she adored him, and so Holmes could not even imagine quite how badly she was suffering inside.

In spite of which she was sitting up entirely straight with her palms folded in her lap. This was a woman of enormous dignity, and Holmes admired that greatly.

He couldn’t help but notice, though, she had a laptop by her side. And by the label fastened to its lid, it appeared to be her husband’s.

“I have no choice but to accept the fact,” she continued quietly, “that I’m never going to get Pieter back. The only course I can now take is help find out what happened to him. And so far as I can see, that means assisting you.”

“And I’m wonderfully grateful for that, dear lady,” the detective assured her.

“Pieter and I have been very close for all the years we have been married. His work apart, we’ve barely left each other’s side. We have the same interests and share the same tastes. I have always thought of us as soul-mates, and yet …”

At which point, she faltered, her head turning down.

Sherlock Holmes could guess what she was trying to say, and felt desperately sad for her. It was something he had come across a thousand times, a story of human weakness as old as the hills. And he struggled to think how he could make this easier for her, but came up with nothing.

Her face lifted again, stiffening with resolve.

“Soul-mates isn’t always good enough for men, now is it? When the flesh begins to falter, and when intimacy between a couple starts to wane? Pieter is a good man, sir, please be assured of that. He is kind and generous and brave. But even good men fall foul of temptation sometimes. And he …”

At which point, her attempts to remain calm finally crumbled and she looked away from him, tears streaming down her face.

Holmes was on his feet in an instant, grasping her hand tenderly with one of his, offering her his kerchief with the other.

“Dear lady,” he said softly, so as not to attract any attention to her. “For heaven’s sake, do not distress yourself so.”

She mopped at her eyes, then gave her head a brisk, stiff shake.

“I’m all right, Mr Holmes,” she told him. And indeed she was already getting herself back under control. “I simply never thought I’d go through stressful times like these.”

Holmes told her that he understood.

She flicked her gaze towards the laptop.

“Is not that where men go, these days, when they seek to stray? I couldn’t bear to look at it myself.”

“And there is no reason why you ever should. Many thanks indeed for bringing it to me. You are a fine, strong woman.”

“I’m an ageing woman, Mr Holmes,” she replied, standing up. “But if there’s one more thing I need to do before I reach the end, it is to get an understanding of all this. Pieter might well have succumbed to temptation, but it must have been a mortal and a fleeting thing, and he did not deserve what happened to him.”

She looked at him directly in the eye before departing.

“Promise me you’ll find who did this, Sherlock Holmes.”

* * *

A man is found in a catatonic state, remains in that state for a few days and then begins to become increasingly fractious and violent? Holmes knew what that sounded like. It sounded remarkably like drug addiction, and the horrible effects of being deprived of such substances. Yet no narcotics had been found in any of the victims.

In his room, he set the laptop down upon his writing desk, which was before the window. He paused a moment before getting seated. The full blood moon could be seen clearly through the windowpane. It struck him again as being like some watching eye, and yet he knew that that was merely his imagination.

Powering the laptop up, he started going through Hoek’s temporary files until he found the kind he wanted. Yes, poor Pieter Hoek had visited a few sites of quite dubious repute. But there was nothing remarkable – far from it – about any of them.

Then he came to a page called ‘Vermillion Moon’.

And it contained only that. Only a picture of the same moon that was staring at him through the window, but a great deal redder. Its background was entirely blank and white. There were no pornographic images, no promises of risqué pleasures. Nothing in the slightest, apart from that single image.

Holmes moved the cursor to it, clicked, then double-clicked, then did the same thing with the right-hand button on the mouse. And nothing happened.

Curious. He’d supposed that these actions would allow him to ‘enter’. But there was no indication how that might be done.

And then he had a thought.

He forgot the mouse altogether, reaching carefully out and touching the red moon with the tip of his long index finger.

A sudden flash went through his head, a bright red one. His body seemed to freeze in place. Next second, however, he got the distinct impression he was floating in a lightless void. Except a voice was speaking to him, a female one that had a languid, dulcet air about it.

“What are you doing here?” it asked him. “You’re not interested in the pleasures that I have to offer.”

It seemed to pause for thought, after which its tone became a little sharper.

“I know who you are! You’re that Sherlock Holmes! You’re trying to find me, aren’t you?”

And it laughed out loud.

“You can hunt for my house all you like! You’ll never, ever track me down!”

The next instant, Holmes was back in his hotel room.

The great detective wobbled slightly and then shook his head to clear it. My word, what a curious experience, somewhat reminiscent of the occasion when he had confronted that curious entity which called itself the ‘Other’.

His hand had fallen from the laptop screen by this time, so he put his finger back where it had been, to no result.

The connection had been broken, and deliberately too – that much was obvious. But now he knew how Pieter Hoek and all the rest had been seduced. If you were interested in the ‘pleasures’ offered and you touched that image of the moon, the voice had to tell you where you ought to go to get them. It had not sounded in the tiniest bit mechanical. But on the other hand, neither had it sounded one hundred percent human.

‘House,’ it had said. ‘You can hunt for my house all you like.’ And had it meant a house of ill-repute, or was it being far more literal. Why not ‘place’, or even ‘home’?

Holmes stood up again and stared across Amsterdam’s roofs. There was a great flat tide of them stretching away in every direction he could see. And under merely one of them was something supernatural and deadly, the strange creature he was looking for. But which one was it?

The owner of the voice had sounded utterly assured, absolutely certain it would never be discovered. Which most likely meant the place in question was a perfectly ordinary residence, with no distinguishing features whatsoever … and what use to him was that?

But then he remembered something from his walk tonight.

And Holmes cried out, “Good Lord!”

* * *

Was the creature still observing him? Holmes doubted that. They had only been connected when he’d touched the screen, and that link had been severed. He’d been abruptly cut off, and that ought most likely to work both ways, he thought.

Holmes went at a steady jog through the hotel lobby, drawing curious glances from the guests and staff. On reaching the open air, he broke into a run. And he was back on the quiet streets above Rokin a mere minute later.

He’d returned to the same unremarkable converted townhouse he had stopped in front of a while back. The building looked precisely the same – pot plants on the windowsills, curtains of differing patterns. It was a remarkably convincing illusion on some levels. Except there was no evidence of any living occupants he could make out.

This was the late evening, and almost all the lights were on in here. But not so much as a moving shadow passed across a windowpane. There was none of that flickering alteration of the quality of light that indicated television sets were being watched, no murmuring from any radio or stereo system.

In most apartment blocks, a dog might bark, a little child might cry out. But this one remained silent.

When he had watched the two gentlemen from the taxicab enter this place, not so long ago, he had seen neither of them reach out and touch any of the bell pushes beside the closed front door. Neither of the men had looked up, waved, or shouted out. The door had simply opened for them, and then closed behind them like the surface of a dark body of water. He had not even heard the buzz – and they were usually quite noticeable – of an automated entry system.

Holmes worked it feverishly through his mind again, trying to make certain that he was correct. The being that had spoken to him when he’d touched the screen … it had broken off contact with him almost as soon as it had discerned that he was no potential victim. But did it do the same with those who answered that description, or did it continue talking to them once that it had got inside their heads, guiding them and coaxing them along?

This door had swung open for those two middle-aged men because the creature knew that they were coming.

But could it see or sense him now? Were eyes – alien and strange ones – watching him from behind the cover of this commonplace façade? Holmes pressed himself against the wall, but nothing happened. So he waited where he was till something did. The truth was, he had little choice.

After some five minutes, a latch clicked. The door eased open, but then slammed shut again before Sherlock Holmes could even take a glimpse inside. A man was standing on the narrow porch, grey of hair and rather overweight, but in a pricey-looking three-piece suit.

He was blinking in the electric glow of the streetlights, and his eyes looked glassy. And the great detective’s first thought was that this might be another victim. But then the fellow looked directly at him, his cheeks reddening slightly. He began walking away immediately, except that Holmes couldn’t help but notice his gait was unsteady and his movements quite disjointed. He was trying to move quickly, but slowed down after the first ten paces. By the time he’d reached the corner of the block, the poor fellow was so tired that he had to lean against a lamppost.

He had not been drained of his vitality altogether, the way that Pieter Hoek and the other unfortunates had. But he had obviously been drained somewhat. Holmes forgot about the man and pressed himself against the brickwork again, waiting for a second chance.

As soon as he heard the latch click again, he launched himself forward, taking little notice of the man who was emerging, simply making sure he got inside the house. The light in here was dim, tinged heavily with red, and it took a few seconds for his eyesight to adjust.

But finally the illusion was revealed for what it was. This was no converted apartment block! There were no individual flats!

He was in an enormous lobby, sumptuously decorated in the grand style of the Belle Époque. The fabric here – and there was much of it, not merely on the furniture but in the form of hanging drapes – was all coloured crimson or scarlet, much of it trimmed with gold brocade. There was a fire crackling in a grate. Antique vases and fine ornaments of glass and gold were on view all around him. Up ahead of him was an enormous stairway – carpeted in red – which led up to the higher levels of this place.

There were couches and chaise longues everywhere he looked. And on those were seated – or, more accurately, lolling – perhaps a dozen well-dressed men of around Pieter Hoek’s age. And for each of them, there were at least three of the young women who staffed this place.

He thought it was the light at first, but Sherlock Holmes began to realise there was something rather strange about them. In the first place, they looked so similar that they could practically be sisters … and since there were several dozen of them, that was quite impossible. In the second, their faces and their bodies – openly apparent through the filmy garments they were wearing – were impossibly perfect. None of these women was particularly tall. They each had short dark hair, a heart-shaped face with bee-stung lips, smooth pale shoulders and the figures of a troupe of teenaged gymnasts.

There was not a spot, a mark, a blemish on any of them that he could see. Except that each of these alluring women – to the last – had a beauty spot above the left-hand corner of her mouth. They looked more like the product of some artist’s imagination than real human beings.

One of them glanced up at him. Her eyes were very dark, and filled with lust and laughter. And when he looked around more closely, Holmes could see the same was true of all of them.

Their movements were languid as a cat’s. They were toying with the menfolk, tickling them under their chins, ruffling their thinning hair and draping breasts against their shoulders. And the men looked spellbound. As Holmes watched, one of them stood up and wandered off in the direction of the staircase with a temptress on each arm.

A door slammed shut up there. The man was gone.

None of these wenches had paid him the slightest attention so far, Holmes took note. So perhaps it was the case he was required to sit down. And he was considering doing that when – to his faint astonishment – he heard his own name being called.

His gaze swung back towards the stairs. A similar woman to the rest was standing at the top of the first flight, smiling at him, with her dark eyes flashing.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes?” she asked. ”The mistress of the house will see you now.”

He was led to the very top, where there was a single open door. When Holmes looked around, the woman who’d accompanied him thus far had vanished. Except that that did not surprise him as much as it should have done.

“Are you going to stand out there all day?” asked a voice from beyond the open doorway.

It was a female voice, of course. And it was very languid, very smooth, as sweet as honey and as dark as chocolate, sexual and tempting in its every variance of tone. Holmes recognised it, naturally, from a short while back. It was the self-same voice he had conversed with when he’d touched the laptop screen.

He took a breath, then stepped into the room. There were no lights switched on in here, but there were two sources of illumination. One was yet another fire burning in a grate – although, peculiarly, it seemed to cast not the slightest heat. The other was the full moon through a solitary window. It appeared bright red, an alarmingly harsh hue. Which told Holmes that he was now as close as he would ever want to get to the real source of this awful magic.

The room was even more sumptuously furnished than the lobby below, animal skins on the floor, huge erotic oil paintings on several of the walls, and satin and silk drapery in every direction that he looked. Over in the corner was a huge four-poster bed. The red light barely reached it, and it was sunken in shadow. But Holmes could make out a woman’s silhouette on it, reclining on one elbow.

“Did you really think that you could fool me, Mr Holmes?” she asked.

She sat up a little higher, with a motion that was just as casual as her voice. Holmes could see she had longer hair by far than all the girls beneath them. She was taller too, and her eyes, they glittered strangely in the long and oval outline of her darkened face

“I knew that you were here as soon as you had entered,” she informed him

“By means of hidden cameras? No, I think not. You simply sensed it by some ancient instinct. None of you are human beings … is that not the case?”

Her lips parted, her teeth flashing whitely, and she let out a shrill laugh.

“What are we then, you great detective? Sirens, you suppose?”

“The women below us are succubae,” Holmes said, “every last one of them. Demons who assume human form, who lie with men and partially devour their soul. The client that I saw out on the street was partly drained, but not completely so.”

“Very good,” his hostess murmured, the tone of her voice becoming even gentler and lighter. “But if that is what they are, then what am I?”

“I believe you are the creature called the Lamia,” was Holmes’ response, “an even more rapacious brute. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew you, and their stories linger to this day. Some claim that you drink living blood. But others tell us that you gorge yourself on human souls, which is precisely what you have been doing. You have been less than two months in Amsterdam—”

“I like to get around,” she shrugged, breaking across him.

“But you have already claimed numerous victims. You will claim no more.”

There was that flash of white again, that rather chilling laugh.

“And how do you hope to stop me, Mr Sherlock Holmes? By whipping out your trusty revolver and shooting me in the head? It’s been tried before.”

She sat up fully, and it was like watching a great coil of blackened smoke adopt a different shape.

“No, you sad fool,” she said. “It’s yourself who is doomed.”

And before his very eyes, she began transforming into her true shape. Her body began elongating hugely, her legs fusing together and her arms melting away. Her hair shrank back into her skull, which was broadening into a triangular shape.

Holmes already knew the fullest details of the legends, knew the Lamia was half a witch and half a giant snake. There was not a second to lose. He flung himself across the room, grasping at the nearest satin drape and wrenching loose its fittings.

The serpent had lifted itself higher when he looked around again, and was preparing to strike at him. Holmes swivelled on his heel and went towards the fireplace. The corners of the drape were blazing in another instant.

Holmes twirled like a matador. The burning fabric straightened out ahead of him. He let go of its corners and the flames struck the four-poster bed.

Which had its own drapes, made of lace. And a canopy of the same fabric. All of which became a ball of fire before he could even blink, the massive serpent writhing at the bright, intense heart of the conflagration.

The blaze was spreading to the other drapes and then the curtains before too much longer. Smoke began to billow out. It was already so hot in here that he could barely breathe. Holmes left the room, and headed down.

The smell of smoke, the crackling sounds of fire, had quite a remarkable effect on the lazy, carnal atmosphere within this strange bordello. Doors came clattering open, men came rushing out, and most of them with garments missing.

In the lobby down below, the clientele were standing up and glancing round alarmedly. It wasn’t long before they realised that they had to go.

As for the succubae, the effect on them was even more astounding. The smiles left their faces and they looked around with startled expressions. Then they simply vanished, leaving this plane of existence with the swift finality of bubbles that had burst.

There was a wild cacophony on the street outside within another minute, partially clad fellows milling everywhere and people in the neighbouring buildings craning out from their windows to get a better look. Holmes stepped away just as slates began to tumble from the burning roof.

A fire engine siren was approaching, but was still a good way off. Beyond the pall of rising smoke, Sherlock Holmes could see the moon again.

It had mostly returned to its natural colour, but had still retained a very slightly reddish tinge. And that disturbed him a little, making the great detective frown.

* * *

“I can understand why such a creature would leave its victims in a state of catatonia,” van Heuten was asking him an hour later. “But why do they, a few days later, become violent and unmanageable?”

“It is as I first suspected,” Holmes replied. “It is a withdrawal from addiction.”

When van Heuten peered at him blankly, he explained as carefully as he was able.

“The Lamia could not have drained those men entirely. No, cruel as she was, she must have placed a single lingering image in their minds.”

“Of …?”

“Why, of herself of course, man. Of her own alluring beauty, her incomparable carnality, and perhaps even her soft, beguiling voice. It was the only thing those sorry men were left with. Yes, the only thing they knew. And so, deprived of her presence for a few days, they reacted the same way all addicts do.”

The Dutchman looked so troubled and dismayed when he heard that, that Holmes felt prepared to alter his opinion of him.

“My boss is lost, then? We will never find a cure?”

“Poor Pieter Hoek is gone,” Holmes nodded, his expression sympathetic. “All the others too.”

“And now,” he added, once that awful truth had sunk in, “I have one more duty to perform, a very sad one too.”

And he asked the man for an address, which was immediately given to him.

* * *

Holmes left it until the next morning, believing that the news he had would sound a little better in the fresh light of a newly dawning day. By seven thirty, he was walking down a pleasant, leafy street not too far from the Van Gogh Museum, heading for a grand-looking apartment block that his practised eye told him had been constructed in the Thirties.

A smiling doorman let him in. He went up to the second floor. But when he reached apartment 12, its door was hanging slightly open.

Holmes rapped gently with his knuckles before venturing inside, but there was no response. The flat was silent and seemed empty, so he made his way into the living room. Lying on a big glass coffee table, there was a plain white envelope with only two words written on it: ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

Carefully, he picked it up. It was unsealed, and he pulled out the sheet of vellum within. The handwriting was copperplate, and had been executed with a fountain pen, and he’d expect no less from someone as refined as Gertrude.

‘Dear Sherlock Holmes,’ her message began.

‘News has reached me, through my network of old friends in the police, that you have solved the case and, indeed, put paid to the culprit. That is good news, and I must congratulate you.

But I have come to realise now that justice and even vengeance, they are not enough. They will not bring my Pieter back, and I miss him so appallingly that it is more unbearable than the worst imaginable physical pain. As I told you when we met, we did most things together, so I feel that I must do this with him too. I have decided I am going join him in the realms of mad oblivion.

It is too late to stop me, sir. And please do not feel sad for me, since it’s the lonely and bereft who ought to be most pitied and – once that this is done – I might become a lot of things, but thankfully not that.

With respect and heartfelt thanks – Gertrude Hoek.’

But what did she mean by this? What did she plan to do?

Holmes looked up, and saw there was another laptop – with a floral cover this time – at a small desk in the corner of the room. Its screensaver was busily at work, but when Holmes touched the mouse, the site came up that Gertrude had been looking at.

There was simply a symbol of a purple crescent moon, no other features at all save for two words at the top: ‘For women.’

All the breath went out of Holmes’ lungs. How had she even known? Either she had not been altogether honest with him, and had looked at Pieter’s laptop after all. Or else … They had been married many years, hadn’t they? Whole decades, in fact. And so … perhaps simply the instincts of a loving and devoted wife?

Blinking, Holmes crossed over very slowly to the window and peered out at the surrounding houses. Their outlines began swimming as he stared at them, and he took in the fact that his own gaze was filling up with tears. An unshakable pall of misery was settling over him, filling him and penetrating him right to the very deepest core.

He decided – in that dull, extended moment – that he did not wish to remain in this city after all. He had best be on the move again.

But where?

A GHOST IN TOKYO

Yes, indeed, he did watch modern movies.

And now it appeared that he had wandered into one, the movie in question being Blade Runner, which was what the Shinjuku district of central Tokyo most closely resembled.

They were walking down its central byway, Yasukuni Dori, ‘dori’ meaning ‘avenue.’ There were four of them in total: Holmes himself, two uniformed policemen, and the plainclothes detective who was in charge of the case. The sidewalks here were crowded to overflowing, but the throng parted quickly for the little group and let it pass.

Holmes was uncomfortably aware of people gawping at him. He had been in the Far East a good number of times before, but here in Japan people were more technically advanced than in much of the rest of the region. They were constantly on the internet. They kept up with the world’s news and its daily gossip. And so it was that he was being recognised, perhaps a dozen times a minute. Mouths dropped open. Eyes went wide. Every few seconds, he would see a camera flash.

Sherlock Holmes himself was far more interested in his surroundings. He had never seen the like of this beyond the curious imaginings of Mr Ridley Scott. Everywhere he looked, above street level, he could see gigantic moving electronic screens. And on those screens was advertising, much of it of an unfathomable nature. Beautiful young oriental women beamed at him and batted their eyelashes. Scenes of tropic paradises would appear for a few seconds, but then fade away again. Japanese lettering, called ‘kanji’, would appear in bright primary colours. Then an image of a mobile phone or a camera would replace them.

But the genuinely remarkable thing was that the vast majority of the people around him – and they were mostly young folk – were ignoring all of that. They had apparently become accustomed to it many years ago, and it was no more interesting to them than a single pine tree might be in an entire forest of them. That was the problem with advertising, wasn’t it? It was so ubiquitous that it got ignored in the end.

Yasukuni Dori was not simply a street of giant screens, though. It was a street of restaurants as well, of cafés, bars, snack joints and clubs. It was one of the nightlife centres, obviously, of this great city. And on a weekend evening such as this, the place was packed.

But gradually the crowds began dropping away behind him, and the great detective and his three companions found themselves on quieter streets. Startlingly quiet, in fact. When they left the main drag and progressed down a far narrower avenue, there were no other pedestrians in the slightest to be seen.

Which was puzzling in itself, since this appeared to be a hotel district. In every direction that he glanced, Holmes could make out modern buildings of that nature, each of them several storeys tall. Except that he could make out not a single doorman or a porter, nor a single clerk behind a desk. The entranceways to these establishments … they were peculiarly dimly lit, he noted.

As for the lighting on the upper storeys? It was there when he stared hard, but was remarkably diminished. All the windows around here seemed to be made of darkly tinted glass. Holmes couldn’t understand it.

Lieutenant Minoshi noticed where the great detective’s gaze was going and said, “These aren’t ordinary hotels, Holmes-san. These are Tokyo’s famous ‘love hotels’.”

Which got a startling reaction from the Englishman. His eyeballs rolled back in their sockets and he emitted a loud, piercing groan. One hand went to his forehead, clutching at it. He looked dazed for a few seconds, like he’d suffered a blow to the skull. But then finally, his eyes cleared and he shook his head, and fiercely too.

“Not again!” he uttered, very loudly. “No, not this again! I’m sorry, lieutenant, but I will not take this case!”

And turning smartly on his heel, he marched away, leaving the scene of the recent crime to languish in oblivion behind him.

* * *

He was almost back to Yasukuni Dori when a hand grabbed at his sleeve. And he was already in such a foul, unhappy state of mind that being manhandled in such a way provoked him. His temper boiled over and he whirled around, prepared to give the culprit a tongue-lashing. Except that it was Lieutenant Minoshi who had done that thing. And when he looked at the expression on her tiny face, his anger dissolved and his mood calmed down.

“Holmes-san,” she said, “please don’t walk away. I think you’ve got this wrong. The love hotels are not what you’d suppose. Let me explain them to you.”

And it wasn’t just her round face that was tiny. Detective Lieutenant Haruko Minoshi barely stood a complete five feet tall. Her limbs were as thin as breadsticks and she had the body of a child. She had put Holmes in mind – when he had first been introduced to her – of some rather feeble little bird.

She was dressed in a very smart – designer, perhaps – dark blue suit, its jacket partly covering a white silk blouse. The shoes she wore were flat ones, and she had black-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of her small nose. Her hair was tied up in a bun, and she spoke perfect English, with only a mild – and rather pleasant – accent. Holmes already knew that she had lived in Cambridge for a while, where she’d acquired a BA and Masters.

She was not even in her thirties yet, but had already risen to an elevated rank. How a figure such as her achieved that in a patriarchal country like Japan still was, Holmes wasn’t sure. But he decided that it might be worth his while to hear her out.

They wound up at a little place she knew, a teahouse you could only get to down a narrow alley. It had bamboo walls, and low tables with cushions round them. Holmes and Haruko Minoshi squatted down facing each other while a steaming pot of greenish tea was brought.

“Would you like some sushi with this,” the lieutenant enquired, “or sashimi?”

“Raw fish? How disgusting! Good God, no!”

And then the great detective tented his fingers underneath his chin.

“Allow me to explain my position to you, lieutenant. I was recently in Amsterdam.”

Minoshi nodded.

“And whilst there, I became involved in a most peculiar and unsettling case which involved women of the streets – well, of the windows in fact – and an extremely unpleasant bordello. It ended tragically, I am afraid, with someone who I quite admired getting hurt. And I resolved, once that had happened—”

“… that you would never again become involved any case that had to do with that particular trade. Yes, Holmes-san, I can perfectly well understand that.”

Sherlock Holmes was not the least bit used to other people finishing his sentences for him. He blinked angrily, but then decided to hold his tongue until he’d heard what Lieutenant Minoshi had to say.

“The love hotels are not bordellos, Holmes-san. They are where couples, even married couples, go to find some privacy.”

Holmes’ face dropped. He’d not been expecting anything like this.

“Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world,” Minoshi continued calmly. “Space is at a premium. Apartments, even family ones, are generally tiny. The majority of people live on top of each other like – how should I put this? – spoons in a cutlery drawer, and most walls are thin. So when a couple wish to spend a romantic evening together, undisturbed and without being overheard, they often prefer to come here.”

He could scarcely believe it. “Are you serious?”

“Why should I not be, Holmes-san? It is a curious cultural phenomenon, for sure, but you are in a city famous for such things.”

Which was certainly the core truth of the matter. Holmes had witnessed many odd and puzzling things since coming here. But, satisfied by what Minoshi had explained to him, he put all that to one side and focused on the details of this particular case, far more interested in it now its setting had been put into a proper context.

“So the young couple in question … they were married?”

A brief smile lit up Lieutenant Minoshi’s compact features. She was pleased that she had managed to change Sherlock Holmes’ mind, and yet she carefully stopped short of looking overly self-satisfied.

“No, they were engaged.” Her tone had become businesslike. “Yukio Tanda and Niko Furugima. They were due to be wed next month. Their families, as you can imagine, are distraught.”

“And they were found dead inside a locked room in one of those hotels? The door locked from the inside?”

“Yes.”

“The windows …?”

“Do not open. There are no inspection panels inside the room either. I checked that myself.”

“And the manner of their slaughter?”

“They were burnt to death.”

“Good Lord!” Holmes shuddered. But then he had a thought, remembering various items on the news that he had seen down the long decades. “It couldn’t have been self-inflicted, could it? Some manner of protest or suicide pact?”

Haruko Minoshi’s head shook, her dark eyes looking very stern behind their spectacles.

“That was one of my first suspicions. Self-immolation is more common in the East than in the West. I had the lab check for accelerants. They found precisely nothing.”

Holmes sipped at his tea, but he could barely taste it by this time. His mind was whirring furiously, but was not arriving at a single sensible conclusion.

“There is only one thing for it, then,” he finally announced. “I’m going to have to take a look myself.”

* * *

When they returned, the pair of uniformed policeman who’d accompanied them were waiting for them outside the dim lobby of a medium-sized hotel. There was no sign of anybody going in or out … no sign of anyone in this whole place, in fact.

There was lettering above the doorway that Holmes could not understand. And so the lieutenant explained to him that this establishment was called the ‘Purple Cloud’.

“You’ve sent all the staff home, I presume?” Holmes asked her as they walked on through.

“No, that is not the case,” Minoshi told him with the briefest of faint grimaces. “There are no staff, not in this hotel nor many like it.”

And for the second time in less than half an hour, Holmes’ expression slackened with astonishment.

“I mean, there are cleaners, of course,” Minoshi continued, producing a plastic swipe-card from her purse. “And people who replenish the mini-bars. They work surreptitiously and quickly while the rooms are not in use. But as for doormen, porters, bellhops, staff at the reception desk … we are a discreet people, Holmes-san, and are easily embarrassed.”

She went on to explain that to maintain discretion and avoid unnecessary awkwardness, hotels such as this one were completely automated.

“Everybody knows why couples come here. To have to check in at a desk, it would involve a quite humiliating loss of face. And so you simply pay by credit card …”

She pushed her swipe-card through a slot.

“… you are assigned a room for a few hours or a night, and you never have to look another human being in the eye, not even for the briefest second.”

A metal door swung open ahead of them, revealing a bare lobby with a set of elevators at the far end.

“Quite remarkable!” Holmes gasped. “I’ve never seen the like!”

“Exactly,” Minoshi nodded. “I believe that it is unique to this city.”

Holmes already knew how keen on automation the Japanese were, and how marvellously advanced were their new techniques. But even he had never suspected they would go as far as this.

Everything looked very clean and rather sterile in the small lobby around him. The walls were a bluish-grey, as was the stiff carpet underfoot. The air was cool and had a filtered smell. And since you were expected to pass through here quickly, there was nothing to give you pause, and not a single place to sit.

Except he noticed an additional detail straight away.

“There are cameras,” he pointed out.

As he watched, a small one in the ceiling turned to focus on him.

“For security, yes, Holmes-san. It is sometimes necessary.”

“There are actually personnel watching the guests, then. And that causes no embarrassment or ‘loss of face’?”

“It is observation from a remote distance, rather than direct personal contact, and the two are seen as separate things. I’m sure that you can fathom the psychology behind it.”

Sherlock nodded. “And where precisely do these cameras go?”

“To the central depot of a security firm not far from here. They keep an eye on several dozen hotels in this district.”

“And they keep recordings?”

“For twelve hours only, but I have already seized the relevant disks. There’s nothing on them, Holmes-san. I have double and then triple-checked.”

They rode a gently humming elevator up. And when they stepped out into the corridor on the third floor, the silence started pressing in around Holmes like some giant set of weights. He had been in thousands of hotels since leaving London – none of them had been as quiet as this.

“Cameras, again,” he observed, glancing up. “I’m hoping that there are not more of them inside the actual rooms?”

“No, but of course not.”

Lieutenant Minoshi led him to a door marked ‘3009’. She used her swipe-card again to gain entry and, as soon as the door swung open, the sheer awfulness of what had happened here became horribly evident. The first thing that battered at Holmes’ senses was the ghastly smell. There was the overpowering odour of a recent conflagration, quite bad enough in itself to make the muscles in your throat clench. But mingled in with that there was a nasty, waxy, sickly stench … the smell of burning human flesh.

The bed was blackened. So was the ceiling above it, and some of the carpet around it. The poor victims had most probably rolled across the bare floor in their final, agonising death throes. The remainder of the room was smeared with soot, and everything in here was glittering with moisture.

Holmes pondered over that for barely half a second before saying, “The sprinkler system cut in, I suppose?”

“Exactly so, Holmes-san. But not quickly enough to save them.”

“They were on the bed?”

“Yes.”

“And in what state of attire?”

“They had only just arrived, and they were mostly fully clothed.”

In previous years, Holmes would have coloured slightly while discussing such intrusive facts. But his experiences of recent times – and most particularly in Amsterdam – had hardened his mentality when it came to such matters. Was he beginning to fit in with this strange age, he wondered, and becoming ‘modern’ after all?

Putting that thought to one side, he began to patrol the entire room, checking every detail of it for some clue that might explain exactly what had happened. There was no indication that the door had been forced. There were ventilation ducts here, certainly, but they were far too small. And there was not a suspect footprint or a fingerprint that he could find. Everything he looked at led him to the troubling conclusion that the unfortunate couple had been entirely on their own in here.

“An electrical fault, perhaps?” he suggested.

Haruko Minoshi’s head shook stiffly. “There are no electrics in the bed, no vibrating mattresses or such. The nearest device to it is the alarm clock, which – as you can see – is entirely pristine. It is barely conceivable that a fault anywhere else could cause a charge to leap this kind of distance, but I had it checked out nonetheless. The wiring in this room is good. In fact, it’s perfect in the whole hotel.”

She’d been extraordinarily thorough in the way she had investigated this strange matter. Sherlock Holmes suspected it was always so. Her intellect was obvious, but intellect all by itself was no use when it came to solving crimes – you needed to combine it with real diligence and proper methodology, which was precisely what she’d done. If only more professional police officers would follow her example.

Except … had there actually even been a crime committed here?

Holmes took a careful look at the adjoining bathroom, finding it to be pristine and unused, before returning to the blackened suite.

A large mirror was fixed to a wall opposite the bed. Staring at it hard, the great detective noticed something slightly odd. He went over and inspected it, and then called Haruko across.

“You’re sure there are no hidden cameras in here? Then what is this?”

It was a circular indentation in the silver of the mirror he was pointing at, no larger than a penny piece. Minoshi studied it assiduously before giving her opinion.

“Merely a flaw in the glass, Holmes-san. I can see nothing beyond it. Maybe the heat caused it, or perhaps it was already there.”

“Aha, I’d imagine that you’re right. Do you suppose that I could take a look at some adjoining rooms?” Holmes asked.

“Of course,” Minoshi told him. And she straightened up, eager to lead the way.

“On my own, lieutenant, if you please,” Holmes corrected her.

And Minoshi looked unhappy and a little stunned, but handed him her swipe-card.

He returned within less than two minutes, still looking totally bewildered and with deep lines on his forehead.

“Did you find anything, Holmes-san?”

“No, I did not.”

He was obviously at a complete loss.

“Could it be an actual case, perhaps,” the consulting detective asked, “of that alleged phenomenon referred to as ‘spontaneous combustion’?”

Lieutenant’s Minoshi’s face went numb, her lower lip jutting out slightly.

“I’m not sure of that,” she answered. “But there is a rumour going around my station house.”

When Holmes stared at her and waited for her to explain, she dropped her gaze away from his, nonplussed.

“Some of my colleagues are saying – the older ones especially – that the culprit in this case is a ghost.”

“But this is such a modern city!” Holmes pointed out loudly. “Do the majority of people here seriously believe in things like phantoms?”

Which was not to say that he did not believe in them himself. Actually, he had personally encountered them in New York City, during the course of a previous case. But he was interested to know what the mentality here was. This appeared to be a city of vast contradictions.

* * *

They were walking briskly down another narrow side street, one that had been closed to traffic and been paved from edge to edge with coloured brick. The streetlighting was dim as well and had a bluish tinge, so that everything around them was lent a faintly unreal aspect.

“You misunderstand Japan, Holmes-san,” Haruko explained to him, with as respectful a tone as she could muster. “Much of what we do is very modern, yes. Yet the majority of people still cling to the old traditions and beliefs. We believe that all our ancestors are watching over us, for instance, and we honour them long after they have passed beyond the veil. So a belief in ghosts in not remarkable – far from it. We don’t accept that people have gone simply because they are dead.”

Holmes turned that over and finally nodded, seeing the attraction of such a concept. How pleasant it would be – for instance – to believe that dear John Watson was still taking notice of his every move, and perhaps even helping sometimes.

But there were pleasant fantasies, and then there were demonstrable facts. Holmes had built his whole career by going on that principle.

“You don’t think a phantom killed that unfortunate couple, do you?” he asked the lieutenant, rather brusquely.

Minoshi’s head went down again.

“I’m not sure quite what to think, Holmes-san. In the lack of any evidence, I have no choice but to keep my mind completely open.”

And – when he thought about that – he could see that she was absolutely right. He had come across a great deal that was unexpected in his recent cases, after all.

They finally reached the offices of Sutomocha Security Services. The lieutenant had already called ahead on her mobile phone, and the manager was expecting them. He led them through into a wide, largely bare room with dozens of closed-circuit monitors set up on the plain grey walls. Each of them showed a picture of a corridor or lobby in the love hotels. As Holmes watched, a couple with their arms around each other disappeared into a room.

“That’s not the Purple Cloud, I hope.”

“No, Mr Holmes. That hotel is closed for business till this matter is resolved. This is …” and the manager studied a logo in the bottom corner of the screen, “… the Heavenly River hotel, three blocks away from the one in question.”

And then he introduced the great detective to the man who’d been on duty when the horrible incident had occurred. Mr Sokua had to be in his late forties, and was already completely bald. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a rather sour expression, but he seemed sharp-eyed, alert enough, and – with Haruko interpreting – he answered Holmes’ questions with not the least hesitation.

“Did you see the young couple on fire?”

“There are no cameras in the room, so I did not.”

“Was there anyone in the hotel who ought not have been there?”

“There was no one.”

“Or anything else that might have aroused your suspicions?”

“On that particular night, no.”

Holmes and Minoshi exchanged a puzzled glance, then stared back at the fellow.

“But on other nights?” Holmes pressed the man.

Sokua and his manager were both looking uncomfortable.

“We record everything the cameras see,” the manager said, stepping in, his wide face creasing up.

“I am aware of that.”

“And it is normally our policy to wipe the disks within twelve hours, to protect the privacy of the hotels’ guests. But there’s a disk we kept, from several nights ago.”

“I take it that there’s something on it?”

The manager’s gaze pinned itself to the floor.

“Ah … indeed.”

He barked an order at Sokua, who went hurrying off to a small filing cabinet at the far side of the room and returned holding a shiny silver disk. When he inserted it into a CD player, a different image flickered up onto the nearest screen.

Holmes immediately recognised the corridor that he was being shown from the style of numbering on the row of doors and from the bluish-grey paint on its walls. This was the Purple Cloud that he was looking at again, though from a remote distance this time. A logo at the bottom of the screen told him this scene had been recorded just three nights ago. Except the corridor was empty and quite static at the moment, and he waited for somebody to appear.

But when a figure did, it was not of the kind he had been expecting.

Yes, it was a human shape. And judging it against the nearest door, it had to be merely four feet tall. A child, then, in a place like this. But resembling no child that he had ever seen. He doubted anyone had gazed upon its like before.

It was a shape, and only that. Nothing more than a human outline, with no features contained within. A blank silhouette, then, except it was not dark. The thing was pale and very faint, so indistinct you almost had to squint to see it.

It wandered down the corridor, despite the fact that its legs were not moving, drifting past the camera lens before disappearing from view. Holmes had Sokua rewind the CD and then freeze the curious image.

“Could this be some technical fault, perhaps? A left-over image from an old recording?”

But the manager shook his head. “It is a brand new disk, and so that cannot be the case.”

Both of Holmes’ eyebrows lifted. He made Sokua run the disk again, but at a quarter of its normal speed. The great detective moved up so close to the screen his nose was almost touching it, studying every aspect of this curious apparition. Then he ushered Lieutenant Minoshi closer with a swift jerk of his finger.

“Observe its surface, would you? Can you see something that you did not before?”

The lieutenant adjusted her glasses and peered.

“It … is flickering slightly. I thought that it was flat before.”

“Exactly.” And Holmes nodded slowly. “It reminds me of a curious sight that I have witnessed several times on places like the Devon moors. Marsh gas, lit up by an inner glow.”

“Are you saying this is methane, Holmes-san?”

But Holmes responded, “No.”

And then he returned his attention to the office manager, who was watching the screen frozenly, his whole face darkened.

“Why did you not inform the police of this earlier, sir?”

The man’s gaze went down to his shoes once more. He tried to clear his throat.

“If word got out that we had recorded a ghost … a firm such as ours needs to have a certain image, if you understand my meaning, Mr Holmes.”

“You mean the gutter press would come pounding on your door, along with deluded halfwits from around the world. You’d be famous for perhaps a week, but your reputation would be ruined. Yes? Is that not so?”

The manager looked shamefaced when he nodded.

“I perfectly understand, and I have one last question,” Holmes told him, changing the subject with the swiftness of a racing driver shifting gears. “I can see nowhere in this room the control which moves the cameras inside the Purple Cloud hotel around.”

The man’s head came up at that remark, his expression transforming to one of mild bewilderment.

“There is no such control, Mr Holmes. No, all the cameras are static.”

Holmes thanked him and promptly left, with Haruko Minoshi trailing along after him.

“Where are we going now, Holmes-san?” she asked him when they hit the open street.

“Are there any clothing stores still open?” was his brisk response.

“Stores? But …  yes, of course.”

“Then, lieutenant, we are going shopping.”

* * *

“Mr Holmes!” she was protesting half an hour later. And where had the honorific ‘san’ – which did not mean ‘Mr’ but was simply an expression of respect – gone? “I do not see the need for this. It is not raining, neither is it snowing … obviously! Dressed like this, we are getting the most curious glances from our fellow pedestrians, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yes, I have,” Holmes told her, without looking round.

“It is most embarrassing, Holmes!”

“I’m sure.”

They were heading back towards the Purple Cloud, and doing it at such a brisk pace they were nearly jogging. Indeed, the lieutenant almost had to canter to keep up. Holmes’ gaze was fastened straight ahead, and he resembled some strange-looking bloodhound that was following a scent.

They finally reached the building, passing through its gloomy entrance till they reached the electronic door. Haruko produced her swipe-card and was moving it towards the slot when Holmes reached out and touched her wrist. He made her pause for almost a full minute, then he nodded and she let them in.

As they stepped into the lobby, the lieutenant asked him, “What exactly were you waiting for?”

All Sherlock did was mutter, “I’m not certain yet.”

That left her a touch slack-jawed.

At the far end of the lobby was the set of elevator doors. Except that one pair was already open, and that had not been the case the first time Holmes had come here. He eyed the empty cage slightly unhappily.

“Could we possibly take a stairway up?” he then asked his companion.

She was starting to stare at him as though she suspected he was losing his mind. Or perhaps this was some form of British eccentricity she’d not previously encountered?

“There’s a fire exit for each floor, but the management’s locked all the doors. And with a key, which I don’t have.” She raised her swipe-card once again. “I’m afraid it’s the lifts or nothing.”

Holmes looked fairly wary when he stepped inside, and his face tightened when the metal doors slid shut. But then – as the lift began to rise – he swept his gaze round his immediate surroundings.

It battened on the mirror fastened to the wall behind them.

“Ah, but here’s another of those flaws.”

Haruko Minoshi swivelled around too, and saw that he was perfectly correct. Circular, and the size of a penny piece, there was another indentation in the silvered glass.

“It could be a mistake by the factory that made them,” she suggested. “Maybe all the mirrors were delivered in this state.”

“No, they were not,” was Holmes reply. “I checked in several of the other rooms, remember? And there were no other marks. Furthermore, this mirror was not marked like this before.”

“You mean that it appeared while we were gone?”

“That is precisely what I’m saying.”

“Perhaps we were riding in another elevator?”

“I’m entirely sure that we were not.”

Haruko’s expression started getting rather flustered.

“What do you believe this is then, Holmes-san?”

“I believe it is an eye, lieutenant. We are being watched.”

“When we first stepped into the lobby downstairs,” he told her, “I distinctly saw a camera move. And yet the manager at Sutomocha assured us that could not be the case. I checked when we came back, and saw he was correct. The fastenings on the cameras ought not allow for movement.”

He looked distinctly relieved when the twin doors came back open, and stepped briskly out into the corridor with the lieutenant on his heels.

“Then there is this business of these flaws appearing and then disappearing in the mirrors.”

“I’m not aware of any of them disappearing, Holmes-san.”

“Then take a look behind you,” said the great detective.

And when Minoshi spun around and peered into the empty elevator cage, the circular mark on the mirror was gone.

“When I first saw one,” Holmes was saying, “I suspected there might be a hidden camera back there, if you recall. Yet I saw no indication in the Sutomocha offices that there was any means of spying inside these rooms. It is no human being who is watching.”

“What then?” his companion blurted.

“It is the hotel itself.”

They both came to a dead halt a bare moment later, and not simply because of what the great detective had just said. They were almost at the door to room 3009.

And it was wide open, despite the fact that Minoshi had shut it firmly when they’d left.

“Courage, lieutenant,” Holmes murmured. “We must display that quality in spades if we are going to confront the true perpetrator of this case.”

He glanced around at Minoshi, expecting her to look dismayed. But her features had hardened to a rigid mask, and she was nodding.

Nothing happened when they went into the room, nor when they wandered purposefully around it. So finally, Sherlock Holmes sat down on the edge of the blackened bed, patting the space beside him to indicate that Minoshi should do the same.

“Are you sure that this is wise?” she asked.

“It appears that we are alone for the moment,” Sherlock nodded. “But be sure to get back to your feet the instant anything shows up.”

And when she asked him why, he told her, “It will soon become apparent.”

Holmes stared around at his surroundings, letting out an odd, disjointed grunting noise.

“I mentioned marsh gas before. D’you know anything about it?”

“I have never seen it for myself, but I have read about it.”

“Then you know it floats in vagrant patches, and it often glows. People in the olden times believed that they were seeing spectral beings, and called them ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘ghost lights’.”

“Ignis fatuus, to use the Latin term. ‘Foolish fire.’”

“Yes indeed. I am impressed. There are several reasons why they glow. One is phosphates mixed in with the gas. Another is something called a piezoelectrical charge, generated by—”

“Quartz, silicon, or arsenic in the ground below.”

“For heaven’s sake, lieutenant, do you have to be so damnably smart? Or keep on interrupting me, for that matter?”

The great detective’s tone was slightly cross, and yet there was a faint smile playing on his lips. Minoshi saw that.

“My apologies, Holmes-san,” she said, her chin ducking, “but I always talk a lot when I am nervous. Tell me, what does ignis fatuus have to do with this hotel?”

Holmes tipped his head back for a while, apparently inspecting the ceiling once again, but in truth arranging his own thoughts.

“It is simply that when I saw that brief recording of the ‘ghost’ I was put in mind of glowing marsh gas, and I wondered if it had a similar cause. Could it be, I wondered, not a spirit I was looking at, but electricity in its raw form?”

He rubbed at his nose before continuing.

“Consider the nature of this place, lieutenant. It ought to be staffed, but it is not. It should properly be full of human beings hard at work, but there are only transient guests. It looks after itself, in fact, performing all the functions of a regular hotel. It is self-contained and self-sufficient. And under those conditions, I have come to understand it has attained a rudimentary form of consciousness.”

“It’s come alive?” Haruko gasped.

“Indeed. The walls of this place have become its flesh. The elevators have become its pumping organs. And the electric current running through its wires—”

“Its life blood, sir?”

“Not merely that. More like the embodiment of its raw, living soul.”

Holmes paused to let that sink in, since poor Haruko had practically gone cross-eyed.

“Consider this, however. It must be a rather simple form of life, and it is very new. In human terms, an infant.”

“Yes, I see that!”

“And like any infant, it despises being lonely and ignored. It wants to mix with people and it wants to play, and doesn’t even understand the harm that it might do.”

“But surely, when it saw the couple burning—?”

“It was given pause and it withdrew a while, which is precisely the reason it has not so far approached us. But – being a child – it will try again before long, hoping for a happier result than last time.”

“It is foolish, then.”

“Only in the sense it knows no better. It behaves like any human child.”

The lighting around them flickered for a moment. Holmes’ face lifted, his demeanour turning very grave.

“Ah, we’d better both get up.”

They did that. There was, almost simultaneously, a crackling noise behind them and they turned, to be confronted by a most profoundly chilling sight. There was an electrical outlet in the wall in that direction. And streaming from it was a small torrent of sparks. As Holmes and Minoshi watched, they began forming themselves into a vaguely realised shape.

The great detective pursed his lips.

“And now you have the evidence of your own eyes, lieutenant. This case is solved, do you not agree? And having solved it, I suggest that we make ourselves scarce. We have no need to make this thing’s acquaintance.”

Which was when there was a hefty bang behind them. The room’s door had just slammed shut.

You did not use the swipe-card to get out of here. There was simply a handle, which Holmes tugged at, but which would not budge. He pounded at the woodwork, then he rammed it with his shoulder. None of which had any effect in the least.

“Step out of the way, Holmes-san!” he heard Minoshi yell.

And when he turned to look at her, she’d dropped into some kind of fighting stance, her fists raised and her knees bent. Whatever she was planning, she had better do it fast. The electric creature was half-formed – you could already see its arms and legs.

What happened next astonished him. Haruko Minoshi let out the most frightful piercing shriek, threw herself some four feet up into the air and lashed out at the door with her right foot. He thought she’d simply hurt herself, but her kick was rewarded with a deafening, resounding crack, and a massive split appeared directly down the centre of the woodwork.

“Goju-kai karate,” Minoshi explained, once she’d come back to earth. “I have a third dan blackbelt.”

He could scarcely believe what he had seen, but Holmes speedily recovered his wits and began to prise the two separate sections of the wood apart.

As soon as they were back out in the corridor, they ran towards the elevators. Except that nothing happened when they pressed the buttons. All the indicator lights were out. The hotel was apparently obstructing them.

“Where’s the fire door?” Holmes yelled.

But he had already been told, hadn’t he? The fire doors – which were of a far heavier construction than the door Minoshi had broken – had already been locked. Only not by any electronic means. He found himself staring at a conventional keyhole.

Holmes glanced round at the lieutenant’s hairstyle, which was done up in a tight, neat bun.

“Are you wearing hairpins, lieutenant?”

Haruko saw what he was driving at, and quickly handed him one.

“When you’ve been around the criminal classes for as long as I have, you are bound to pick up certain of their tricks.” Holmes paused in the act of bending the thin wire into shape. “Are your constables still on guard below us?”

The lieutenant nodded.

“Then you’d best get on your mobile phone and appraise them of the situation. We will need another exit on the ground floor, and we’ll need it opened quickly.”

He was bending to the lock, when another busy crackling sound brought his gaze jerking up.

The creature was emerging from the broken doorway, and was fully formed by this stage. As on the CD recording, it was faint, but definitely had a human shape. Its surface glittered and then shifted as it began floating towards them.

Minoshi was yelling on her mobile phone. Holmes tried to blank his mind to the approaching danger, and attended to the lock. He could not get the tumblers to move at first. He cursed under his breath, and tried shifting the wire to a different angle. When he heard the bolt click back, he breathed out with relief.

But then Minoshi howled with fright, beside him.

The electric creature, it was practically upon them. One pale, glowing arm was reaching out. Holmes grabbed wildly at the Japanese lieutenant, trying to haul her away from its deadly touch. But he was momentarily too late, and its fingers brushed against her elbow.

Holmes felt a mild tingle running through his frame, but that was all. Next second, he and Minoshi were off, the pair of them pounding down the fire stairs. A heavy thumping noise below them told them that the uniformed men were breaking down the last door with an axe.

They were both panting heavily and shivering by the time they got outside. The night air felt very cool against Holmes’ dampened flesh. He waited for his breathing to return to normal, keeping his eye on the lobby of the Purple Cloud the entire time. But nothing more emerged from that direction. When he thought about it, he could see how unlikely it was that the strange creature could ever leave the building where it had been born.

Satisfied that they were safe, he turned to Lieutenant Minoshi again, with a smile of triumph on his face.

“Now do you see why I insisted that we buy rubber galoshes? Had we not been wearing them, then we would quite literally be toast by this late stage.”

Haruko had gone very quiet, and nodded dumbly.

“As to the electric being inside that hotel, the Tokyo authorities have two clear choices: they can study it and attempt to learn more about it; or else, they can simply turn the power off. It is up to them, and I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

So it ever was with Sherlock Holmes. Case closed.

* * *

On his final night in Tokyo, Minoshi took him back to the teahouse that they had visited at the start of their encounter. It was a calm and beautifully simple place, pleasing to the various senses.

As they sipped green tea around a low table, Holmes ventured to remark, “The way you broke that door in half, a person of your stature. It was most impressive.”

Haruko flushed gently. “It has nothing to do with size or muscles, Holmes-san. It is far more a matter of correctly executed technique. That, and strength of will.”

A waitress was approaching them, carrying a small white plate. And when she set it down in front of them, Holmes could see it contained several lumps of sushi. He’d already expressed distaste at the very idea of the stuff, and glanced at the lieutenant curiously, wondering what this was all about.

Haruko was smiling. “It is a test for you, Holmes-san. And there is a lesson to be learned.”

She was obviously daring him to take a bite. Only … what could possibly be learned from that? Holmes peered at her crossly, but then picked a portion up.

He held his breath and almost closed his eyes, then jammed the wretched thing inside his mouth. Surely it would not be too long before nausea overcame him and he spat the vile thing out?

Except that nothing like that happened. Holmes chewed down, and felt a broad smile stretching out across his face, his eyes opening wide.

“My word, it is utterly delicious! The taste … is nothing like I’d imagined it would be!”

He swallowed, reached across to take another piece, then paused.

“And the lesson, I suppose,” he murmured thoughtfully, “is that to be a great detective, you should keep your mind entirely open at all times, and never let blind prejudice deter you. It is a fine lesson, lieutenant. You have my thanks for that, and for a great deal more. Or perhaps there is a better way of putting it.”

Sherlock Holmes lowered his eyelids and ducked his head respectfully.

“Domo arigato, Minoshi-san.”

FLIGHT OF FANTASY

The sky over Tokyo’s Narita airport had darkened several hours earlier than it should have done, bleeding of its brightness as though evening were already there and turning the same colour as a sheet of lead. Shadow hung over the whole adjacent and sprawling metropolis, in fact – the streetlights had been switched on, and the major routes were filled up with the swift glitter of headlamps. There was a square of glowing yellow as well in numerous of the windows in apartment buildings and in office blocks, despite the fact that time had barely spooled round to the middle of the afternoon. A storm had closed in over Tokyo very rapidly, which often is the way the weather changes in the East.

Sherlock Holmes was headed back to Europe. The flight that he had booked was scheduled to take him non-stop to the hub airport at Frankfurt. And after that, who knew where he might go? He half had a fancy to venture eastwards again, not so far as this but to such former Iron Curtain capitals as Budapest and Warsaw. He had not travelled too much in those parts, but had been assured that they were genuinely quaint and fascinating places. And were there any mysteries to solve there? Well, he really had no doubts on that score. Crime was a constant all across the world, like taxes and like death. It was the dark side of the human – and the inhuman – condition, and could be relied upon to rear its head wherever on this globe he went.

He was comfortably ensconced in one of the bars in the departure lounge, a broadsheet newspaper spread open on his knees and a particularly delicious glass of pina colada on the small table beside him. And he was doing his best to concentrate his attention on the journalistic piece that he was reading – it was about the latest floundering attempts to save that curious and somewhat bogus modern currency that had been called the euro. It was, in his opinion, like trying to save the dodo: the wretched thing was already dead. But much of the financial wellbeing of the world depended upon this issue being resolved, he understood how important it was, and so he kept on reading.

Except that, being a deeply inquisitive man, and feeling impelled to be constantly aware of his immediate surroundings, Sherlock Holmes’ gaze kept on flickering up. He’d scan the airport swiftly for a brief handful of seconds, before dutifully returning to the article in question.

What he saw was what you always saw in places such as this: people standing under notice boards, waiting for their flight to be announced; eople heading quickly to their gates, or milling fairly casually round the numerous shops; people trying to control their smaller children. Others were sitting in various positions on the massive rows of chairs, a few of them sprawled out and practically asleep. But several more were perched there rather nervously, resembling caged birds who had detected the presence of a cat.

But finally, Holmes noticed something else – something that was not quite so familiar.

More of the passengers than was usual – and especially the oriental ones – had gathered at the massive plate-glass windows that looked out across the runways. And they were not staring at the parked and waiting planes. Their heads were tipped back, they were gazing at the churning, darkened bruise that was the overhanging sky.

While Sherlock Holmes’ gaze was travelling across these folk, a clap of thunder rang out from the heavens, so loud and so violent that the tiles under his feet appeared to shake.

The atmosphere in Narita immediately changed. Those who’d been behaving casually before looked off in the direction of the huge windows as well. Their movements slowed down, stiffening, their expressions turning noticeably more solemn. As for those who had been nervous in the first place … ah, they had a genuine reason for it now. Some of them went very pale, and one young girl looked almost sick with shock.

“Looks like we’re going to have a choppy flight,” said a calm female voice to Holmes’ left.

He turned to find himself being stared back at by a sparkling pair of blue-green eyes. Surrounding them was the handsome face of a middle-aged woman, apparently in her early forties, although Holmes could tell that she had elected for a few small touches of cosmetic surgery, and so was probably older than that. Her well coiffed hair was blonde, but had been dyed. She was remarkably smartly dressed, her suit classic Chanel, her accessories expensive and her white gold watch a Cartier.

And she was smiling broadly, yes, in spite of her remark. Holmes was not afraid of flying in bad weather and, apparently, neither was she.

She reached across from the adjacent table, extending a hand, which she expected him to shake.

“You’re Mr Sherlock Holmes, are you not? I recognised you from your pictures in the papers. I am very pleased indeed to come across you, sir. I’m—”

“Elizabeth Bradman,” Holmes said, “from Savannah, Georgia.”

Her eyes widened, but her smile … it did not leave the woman’s face. It simply transformed from a friendly smile to one tinged with amazement. Then a realisation seemed to strike her and she glanced down at the Louis Vuitton flight bag on her lap. It had a label on the handle that identified her by her name.

“Well spotted, Mr Holmes, although a rather elementary trick. But as to where I hail from …?”

“You have amply demonstrated how I knew that with your last two words,” Holmes told her with a gentle grin. “How many people, in this day and age, use such a term as ‘hail from’? Any fool could tell that you are from the southern states. But nowhere else in that whole region is that accent threaded through with such formality and grace as in the lovely city of Savannah.”

And, as often happens when two travellers find themselves with time to spare and little else to occupy their intellects, they began chatting as though they were a pair of long-term friends. Holmes told her some details of his recent adventures in the city they had left behind, and she listened with rapt attention.

Not without reason, as it turned out. For it proved to be the case, once she had begun explaining her own circumstances, that Lizzie – and she insisted on being called Lizzie – was an internationally best-selling author of fantasy novels. To prove it, she produced one such paperback item from her bag. It had a garish cover, depicting a dragon on a strange landscape of crystal, and was apparently set in an alternate world called ‘Nevergone’. There was an entire series of these books, Holmes discerned when he leafed through the first couple of pages. He had never heard of them, and did not read this kind of stuff, but Lizzie, it was obvious, had a vast number of fans.

She had been in Tokyo as the guest of honour at a fantasy convention, and it was scarcely the first time she’d found herself in such a role. He watched her studiedly while she explained the way she travelled constantly, the whole world’s width, attending at conventions, giving readings and interviews and talks and appearing on panels. Holmes was much impressed, but one thing was still bothering him.

“All of that is interesting, but does not entirely explain,” he put to her, “your equanimity when faced with flying in bad weather. Even frequent travellers will often draw the line at that. No, there is something else about you that makes you so very calm. Something in your background, perhaps?”

Lizzie’s smile was still in place, except that by this juncture it had become slightly mischievous and challenging. She waited for Holmes to come up with the most likely solution, and she did it with one eyebrow raised.

Holmes turned it over for a little while, then ventured, “Not now, but in earlier years, I believe that you were a reservist with the US Air Force.”

Lizzie’s face became a mask of sheer astonishment. “But how did you know that?” she cried.

“Sometimes, even a detective like myself must trust his instincts and take an inspired guess. I can detect no physical proof in the slightest that you were once what I’ve described. But there is something to your whole demeanour, the glint in your eye and the straightness of your back, the way that you seem to grow ever more casual in the face of an impending threat. It speaks of military experience, although not full time – your spirit is too independent for a lifetime spent like that.”

She took in what he’d said, then nodded slowly. Holmes, however, was not entirely done as yet.

“In fact,” he put in as a last remark, “I’ll wager you still like to pilot planes yourself, even to this very day.”

And Lizzie’s smile came flashing back. “I’ve just recently bought myself a brand-new Cessna,” she confirmed. “And I’ve always loved to skydive when I get the chance.”

And here she was, almost certainly in her late forties or even early fifties. A remarkable woman, then. Much about the world had changed for the worse since his day, but not this aspect of it. Holmes was for equality of opportunity in every shape and form, and so this new breed of emancipated, daring females was a social change that pleased him greatly.

He was trying to think of some way to put that without sounding patronising when the public address system chimed, and then a Japanese voice began blaring out. It was the Frankfurt flight that was being announced. Holmes glanced at his watch, and saw that they were being boarded fifteen minutes early.

Lizzie had noticed the same fact, but, experienced as she was, it did not seem to surprise her.

“They’re trying to get us up before the storm starts hitting hard,” she remarked, standing and arranging the strap of her bag across one shoulder.

Holmes, ever the gentleman, promptly rose up to his feet as well. Another even louder thunderclap shook the walls of Narita, accompanied by a flash of lightning this time, and several of the passengers around them let out gasps.

“It strikes me that they’ve left it far too late,” he said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts …”

“… it’s going to be a bumpy night,” Holmes grinned, completing the quote, which he recognised.

They went side by side down the sterile, unappealing corridors that led them to their gate. And, as soon as they arrived there, they could see brightly uniformed attendants who were checking people’s tickets with uncommon haste and ushering them through in the direction of the final walkway. Lizzie Bradman yanked her own documentation from her bag, but then gave Holmes a sideways glance.

“I’m Club Class, Mr Holmes. Are you the same?”

Which made the great detective pull a mildly pensive face.

“I’m afraid not, dear lady. For the most part these days, you see, I work at the behest of the police. And they pay me for my efforts, certainly. But not so handsomely as some grand dowager or spendthrift baronet would do.”

“You’ve become a public employee, then?”

She said it without sounding mocking.

“Self-employed, but by the public, yes.” Holmes could only shrug, though he contrived to do it casually. “A sign of the times, I suppose. I am forced to go about in the same manner as the vast mass of the general population. It is very democratic, I am sure, but wearisome sometimes.”

He was already quite uncomfortably aware that the slang term for the mode of travel that he was about to undertake was ‘cattle class’. Several hundred human bodies, packed together so tightly they might as well be cutlery inside a pantry drawer. He would describe himself as many things, but never ‘cattle’, and it pained him slightly.

Except that Lizzie Bradman noticed his unease immediately. With an amazingly light, deft touch, she took hold of one of his elbows with her fingertips, squeezing it in such a fashion as to simultaneously comfort him and draw him slightly nearer.

“Don’t you worry on it, not an instant, Sherlock … may I call you that?” Her tastefully red-painted lips edged up a little closer to his ear. “As soon as they allow us to get up and move around, why, I’ll come heading back to see you, and I’ll bring some champagne with me.”

“That would be quite excellent,” was the detective’s immediate response.

He really did enjoy Lizzie’s company a remarkable amount. They had never met before, and only known each other for the briefest while, and yet it felt as if they knew each other well. Such were the vagaries of human nature, Holmes decided. Likings and dislikes had no genuine logic to them, but were based upon subconscious instincts. And Mr Sigmund Freud and his ilk had tried to make a science out of analysing those, but had not really succeeded much to Holmes’ way of thinking.

All he really knew was that he felt a strong pang of regret when Lizzie walked away from him, retreating down the corridor. It was rare for him to feel such a powerful affinity with someone he had only very recently encountered. But maybe this was what a term like ‘friendship’ really meant. You decided that you liked each other in the moment that you met.

He only had to wait a bare couple of minutes before his seat number was called out with the rest. And then he found himself shuffling along the walkway to the plane with all the other cheaper passengers.

There were small, square Perspex windows ranged to either side of them as they approached the airplane’s door. Through them, he could make out that the sky had grown a great deal darker, phasing through to almost black. And lightning bolts were surging down as though some ancient deity were digging at the planet with bright silver dinner forks. The walkway was shuddering to repeated bursts of thunder. And his fellow passengers around him were wide-eyed, their movements unsteady and their faces taut.

It was like being on the treadmill to an abattoir, in other words. Yes, ‘cattle class’ indeed.

* * *

The liner started being buffeted as soon as it was off the ground. Its port wing tilted over sharply upon take-off, and for one horrid moment Holmes was certain it would strike against the tarmac of the runway and so send them plunging to their doom. Such accidents were rare, but they had happened in the past. But then the pilot pulled the aircraft’s nose up hard, and the soil of Japan was lost beneath them in another second.

Several of the passengers around him were emitting high-pitched shrieks, regardless. But Holmes simply tightened his seatbelt another notch, then settled back.

He had flown for most of his extensive life. He had been across the world and back on more occasions than he could recount. He had not only been numerous times in planes like these, but in far smaller ones, in helicopters, and even in hot air balloons. During the course of World War II, he had flown several times in military aircraft and then parachuted from them into Occupied Europe, on some or other mission. And so flying held no terrors for him in the least.

On the headrest of the seat in front of him was the usual electronic screen. He switched it on, and it described the movies and the TV shows it had to play, the games that were available, but he ignored all that. He selected, instead, a crude animation of this airplane with a row of figures by its side that told you what the craft was doing. In the next few minutes, it had climbed to some thirty-five thousand feet, which was the usual altitude for journeys of this kind. But then it kept on going.

It became immediately obvious what the pilot was doing. He was trying to climb above the storm and find some calmer air to sail through. Holmes watched as their height went up through thirty-eight to forty thousand feet, and then reached forty-two.

Still, the darkened clouds around them refused to subside. Still, the lightning flashed. Apart from that, it was as black as a coalmine round the plane, and the whole fuselage continued to shudder like the neck of a rat in the grip of some deranged terrier.

Holmes was at the window, and found himself staring down. Occasionally, a gap would appear in the mass of cloud below, and he would catch a glimpse of land. They were over mountain peaks by this time, and so, travelling westwards, they had reached the centre of Japan.

Their altitude reached almost fifty thousand feet, which was quite near to the limit at which these planes flew. And still the great storm had them in its grip. The darkness and the lightning showed no signs of abating. Great, blinding flashes of the latter would erupt almost directly outside Holmes’ window. They dazzled him and made him squint. And the plane was being shaken around harder and more savagely with every passing minute.

“This is your captain,” came a voice over the PA system, the first thing he or any of the rest had heard from the individual in charge. “As you can tell, we’re still encountering severe weather conditions. I would ask you to remain seated, since the seatbelt lights are still switched on.”

Holmes was already aware of that. They had been airborne for a whole half hour by this time, and not a single member of the cabin staff had got up to their feet and walked around. So much for the glass of champagne he’d been promised. He’d be lucky if he managed to get himself a paper cup of water.

He tried to close his eyes. He tried to doze, which is the wisest thing that you can do when you are trapped on board a plane. But the bursts of lightning were so intense, the turbulence so vicious, he could manage neither. It was as though the liner were an ocean one, and being hammered at by massive waves.

Many of the children on this flight were crying by this juncture, wailing piteously or letting out profound and solemn moans. And some of the adults round him looked on the verge of descending to the self-same febrile state. The elderly man next to him had his eyelids squeezed tightly shut, and every time that the plane jolted then his head, loose on his neck, would do the same. He kept emitting startled grunting sounds. The woman next to him looked close to fainting.

Which was absurd. What would that achieve? There were simply some aspects of life that had to be endured. Victorian travellers had always known that, and Holmes knew it too. He toyed idly with the buttons that controlled the screen in front of him, running at last through the movie and the TV channels. Almost all of it was comedy and fluff, and held out no attraction to him. And so he summoned up a computerised game of backgammon, beat the computer in three minutes flat, sighed boredly and switched the machine off and let his head drop back.

Holmes hadn’t eaten a bite at Narita and was now regretting it. As soon as he started thinking about food, his gut vibrated with a gentle growl. The air inside this cabin was becoming stale extremely quickly. And so he was finally forced to admit the truth of this whole matter: this was, without the faintest shadow of a doubt, the most unpleasant journey he had ever been on. How much more would he and the rest be forced to take before they put this storm behind them?

It really was a remarkably large one, even by the standards of the turbulent Far East. When he got another glance down through a small break in the clouds, he could make out a grey patch of ocean. Which had to mean that they were now crossing the Sea of Japan, on their way to the far eastern tip of Russia and then mainland China. Was the storm actually following them? And if not, how far did it go?

It was a sudden change in engine noise that brought him sitting upright. The pitch of the jet on the port side of the plane remained at a continuous, steady moan. But the tone of the one on the starboard side – his side – had begun stuttering and faltering, and Holmes had never heard anything like that before.

A passenger in the rows of seats ahead of him let out a startled yell. And then he heard someone shout, in an Australian accent, “Christ, this isn’t happening!”

And then – to even Holmes’ rank dismay – a stream of even thicker murky black poured out beyond the glass that he was looking through. Smoke had begun belching from the engine. He could see no flames, or even sparks, but it had obviously overheated.

Holmes’ mind darted in several directions at once. The supremely logical part of his intellect puzzled itself over why this thing had happened, and concluded that it was most likely the result of struggling against the violence of the air around them. But the more practical part of his consciousness … it began looking around for solutions to the horrible dilemma he and all the rest were in. The engine could not be fixed until the craft was on the ground. And as for exit from it? His gaze went rapidly about the cabin, hunting for any sign of an expanse of fabric he could turn into a makeshift parachute. But there was nothing.

Everyone around him had gone awfully still and quiet, he noticed. Then he took in – almost with a sense of shock – that he had gone the same himself. Time hung suspended, like a bubble in a jar of honey – he was afraid that if he moved or made a sound the thin membrane would burst and he would be engulfed.

And then the whole plane shuddered with a groaning noise, tipping over almost to a forty-five degree angle and dropping several hundred feet in barely a few seconds, which made everybody scream at once.

Had he screamed? Holmes was not entirely sure. He felt peculiarly dislocated from his body, like his consciousness was floating just above his head. He could no longer feel his limbs, nor make his fingers respond to his mind’s instructions. If he tried to stand up, he felt quite sure he couldn’t manage it. This was like one of those awful, haunting dreams, where you were in a place, but were entirely unsure which manner of place it was or how you’d got there. Except that a dream was something that you woke from and then put behind you, and this plane was not as easily escapable as that.

The fuselage lurched wildly and then gave another massive downward jolt. And there were sparks appearing by this juncture, mingled in with the smoke from the ailing engine. It occurred to Holmes that he had never in his life felt so entirely helpless. But then his mind fixed on something else.

That tumble down the Reichenbach Falls … he had survived it. Numerous violent encounters since then had been lived through and he’d remained intact. He was immortal, or at the very least he’d lived an incongruously lengthy and replete existence. But should this plane smack down onto the grey water below them … could even he survive an impact such as that?

The plane was dropping lower, lower, like a mayfly in the dying seconds of its single day on earth. The starboard jet was making no sounds now, stuttering or otherwise, and so apparently had been switched off. But the storm continued beating at the fuselage with a merciless savagery. The lights inside the cabin all began to flicker.

Was this it? Was he done? The air of detachment that had closed over him grew ever more profound. His eyes told him that there was pandemonium around him, people crying, screaming, pleading with whatever God that they could summon up. He could see their mouths moving, see their hands wringing together but, strangely he could hear absolutely nothing.

He unbuckled his seatbelt very calmly and stood up. And then he stepped over the passengers beside him till he reached the aisle. He was forced to walk steeply downhill to reach Club Class, clinging to the other seats as he went by, since the nose of the jetliner was firmly down by this stage, the craft losing height rapidly.

Except that, when he found Lizzie, he was jolted by the shock of her appearance. Every single other person on this plane was caught up in the strident paroxysms of mortal terror. Whereas she was sitting just as calmly as she had been when he’d first met her in the departure lounge.

Her back was straight and her gaze steady. One smooth leg was folded carefully across the other. Her expression was as utterly unrumpled as her Chanel suit. This might as well have been a normal flight, so far as she appeared to be concerned.

She had pulled something out from beneath the blouse that she was wearing. It was some manner of pendant, hung about her neck by the thinnest of silver chains. Holmes tried to make out what it was, but it was half-concealed within her grasp. A flat pendant, and apparently silver, in the shape of … was that a strangely spiky tree, or could it be a coiled up dragon?

She noticed he was there, looked up at him and smiled. Then her gaze went to the empty chair across from her, indicating he should sit down in it. Once he had done so, she edged her shoulders to her left and handed him a tall flute glass.

“Here’s the champagne that I promised. I got served it when I boarded, and saved it for you. I’m most terribly sorry, but I fear it’s gone a little flat.”

Holmes took it, but did not respond, staring at her evenly and wondering what she might be thinking.

Now that he was looking closer, he could see the pendant in her hand was actually made of something other than plain silver. It had an altogether glossier surface, almost like a mirror, and reflected the lighting in the cabin strangely, breaking it up into bands of shifting colour, with a large preponderance of purple.

He was still amazed at how untroubled the woman was, and decided to put it into words.

“This plane is going down hard, Lizzie. Why doesn’t that bother you?”

Her gaze dipped for a moment, then she stared at him directly in the eye.

“You’ve begun suspecting I’m the cause of this?” Her blonde head gave a tiny shake. “That’s not true at all. It’s simply the case that I, like no one else on this airliner, understand what this storm is, since I’ve encountered it before.”

And she proceeded to tell him her story. She had been in her late twenties, already a reservist by then, flying a plane for the Air Force. And she’d been on a cross-country mission from one base to another in a different state when she had run into a storm exactly like this one.

“I thought that I was going to die.”

“Well, obviously, you did not.”

The walls of the cabin continued to shudder around them, but Holmes did his best to ignore it.

“But then I broke out into steady, open air, and saw something remarkable,” Lizzie was telling him. “The landscape below me was no longer arid desert, as it should have been. Instead, there were forests made of crystal. There were great lakes of a thousand different, subtle colours. And I thought at first that I had perished and then gone to someplace else, but finally I saw the truth. The storm had been a great tear in the fabric of the Universe, and I had broken through into another world.”

Holmes turned that over very slowly, and could come to only one conclusion. So he muttered the word, “Nevergone.”

“I knew that you, of all people, would understand.” And Lizzie shrugged, her expression becoming slightly wry and testy. “So basically, as an author, I’m a total fraud. I have no imagination in the least, and have never made up so much as a single story.”

“You have simply reported what you’ve seen and heard. You’ve been many times to this strange world you talk about?”

She held the pendant up a little higher. “Its inhabitants, they gave me this. It’s a key, of sorts.”

“But … you were in an aeroplane the first time that you went there, Lizzie. How exactly did you land? And how on earth did you ever manage to return here?”

At which point, her eyes went to her own cabin window, a faraway look filling up those blue-green orbs. Her mouth pursed slightly, then she said, “They helped me.”

And, wondering who ‘they’ might be, Holmes tried to cast his own gaze in the same direction she was looking. Except that dark cloud was still rolling past the little windowpane, and it was suddenly illuminated with so bright a flash of lightning that it seemed to pierce his senses to their very core. His eyelids slammed shut, but the brightness lingered within his mind’s eye. Holmes believed there was a tinge of purple to it, but that might have simply been a product of his fraught imagination.

Save that when his eyes came back open, the storm was gone. The sky was clear and blue – though with a purplish tinge – in every direction that he looked.

He edged swiftly closer to the window and looked down. They should have still been over the Sea of Japan, but instead there were rolling forested hills below them, so vast that they stretched unbrokenly towards the far horizon. It looked like they were normal pines, at first. But then Holmes noticed that they were reflecting the sunlight. They were apparently made of some manner of crystal, exactly as had been depicted on the cover of the book Lizzie had given him.

Holmes’ jaw dropped open, and even his intensely acute mind went blank for quite a while. Of all the strangeness that he had encountered, right across this seething modern world, he had never been witness to anything nearly so bizarre as this. He felt numb and stunned, like he was in a trance. His senses returned to him only gradually.

What finally brought him out of his stupor was the realisation that, although their situation might have changed, their circumstances certainly had not.

The jetliner was just as wounded as it had been in the normal world. It continued to tilt downward, and it was still falling.

“Who are ‘they’ Lizzie?” he asked his companion urgently. “And if they are to help us, they must help us now!”

Lizzie’s demeanour was still tranquil.

“They are fast, and they are smart and strong, and always seem to sense when I’m in danger.” And then she broke into another smile, which then transformed, in turn, into a faint, delighted gasp. “Ah, here they come!”

She had turned her gaze towards the sun. It was paler than the one that Holmes was used to and far easier to look at. It still made him squint a little, for sure, but he could make out that it had a reddish outer edge. And at the centre of it, there were two small dots, which rapidly expanded as he watched.

And as they closed in on the stricken plane, their shapes began to flatten out, till Holmes could make out constant and repeated movement. These were winged creatures he was looking at … he thought at first they might be birds.

But then the strangely tinted sunlight glittered on their flanks, and he realised that was not the case. These were scaly creatures, getting nearer all the time until the great detective was able to discern that they were enormous flying reptiles, strong of limb, wild of visage, their huge fanged jaws agape, their eyes blazing red beneath their curving, armoured brows, their leathery wings beating at the atmosphere with practically a roaring sound.

Each of them, he reckoned, had to be forty feet long from the top of its muzzle to the spear-shaped tip of its tail. Holmes sucked in an astonished breath, since he was looking at a pair of dragons.

He scarcely had time to take in what was happening before they split apart, wheeled around the aircraft with a sleek agility that totally belied their size, then disappeared from sight.

There was a sudden bang from both sides of the plane. It jolted abruptly. Then its nose pulled up, and it was flying on the level in a few more seconds.

Lizzie Bradman was now beaming like a happy child.

Holmes pressed closer to the window, so that he could see the whole of the aircraft’s wing. And sure enough, one of the dragons now had hold of the metal in its mighty claws. Doubtlessly, the same was true on the opposite side. The creature had redoubled its efforts with its bat-like wings and, with the aid of its companion, it was keeping the jetliner comfortably aloft.

It took a while for his heart to cease its thudding, for his pulse to stop hammering in his throat and for his fogged mind to accept this situation. Sherlock Holmes was conscious of the reflex motion every single time he blinked. But he became aware of something else. The whole mood in the plane had changed. He had not been able to see the other passengers for the past few minutes, so situated was his chair, but he’d been able to hear their cries and screams. And all of that had died away. Every single person on this craft had lapsed into the same stunned silence that had recently come over him.

He finally settled back against his seat’s upholstery, gazed cautiously at Lizzie again and found the voice to ask, “How could you be sure they’d come?”

“They always do,” she chuckled, “every time I’m here. It’s one of the things I’ve learned about Nevergone. No one is allowed to come to any genuine harm here.”

“Is that so?” Holmes heard himself mutter.

“Yes, indeed. This is a far happier world than ours. I often wish that I could stay here.”

And he was about to ask her why she did not when Holmes noticed a slight change in the atmosphere directly around him. The recycled air had taken on the faintest glitter. It was as though it had been electrically lit up. The seat that he was in, the wall to one side and the little table to the other were all sparkling like a patina of golden dust had been applied. Even Lizzie and her own surroundings were aglitter when his head came up.

And he was wondering what was causing it, when a fresh movement made him look along the aisle. There was another flying creature on the inside of this plane, save that it was not any massive dragon this time. It had to be no more than five inches in height, had the veined and glassy thin wings of a dragonfly, but was other than that humanoid in shape, a woman’s shape, stark naked and pale pink.

Was this a …? He could barely even allow the word inside his head. Holmes attempted to stand up again, only to discover that his strength had really fled him.

The strange glow all around him, it was getting slightly stronger. And it was making him weary, making him drowsy, acting on his senses like an opiate. He could not understand why that was.

Nonetheless, he felt his head loll to one side, and that allowed him one last glance out of the nearby window. The crystal forests down below still rolled off towards the far horizon but, in the middle distance now, a huge section had been cleared. And a great city stood there. It was made of crystal too, but blue, purple and carmine this time.

Peaked towers like minarets rose very high into the air, and he could make out, at the centre of it all, a tall castle with battlements. He thought at first that the dragons might start heading across to that fantastic-looking place. But no, it seemed that they were merely flying past it.

The golden glow became so intense that Holmes could no longer make out anything past it. And then consciousness slipped away from him completely, his inner world becoming shapeless and entirely dark.

* * *

He was woken by a gentle bump. His eyes came open with a painful slowness, and he realised he was slouched low in his seat. He straightened up his back as gently as he could, then rubbed at his face and stared around him.

He could hear the noise of just one engine. When he looked out of his window, it was to gaze upon the silvery light of dawn, the sun a bright flare on the east horizon. The airplane was still listing slightly to one side, and had dropped low. And there were green fields and the little roofs of houses going by. But then Holmes remembered everything he’d seen before. His gaze shot urgently to the plane’s wing.

The turbine was still switched off, which explained the plane’s slight tilt. But there was no dragon, nor any other type of creature, holding onto it.

They were back in the normal world. Or rather, they had never left it, since his experiences in ‘Nevergone’ all had to be a dream. There was no other sensible explanation, and he chided himself for accepting that peculiar fantasy so gullibly.

Only that then he took in something else. The seat opposite him, it was empty. Where had Lizzie gone? He stood carefully up and peered about, and got another gentle shock.

Every single passenger in Club Class was fast asleep, with no exception. There were two flight attendants in this compartment, and even they were dead to the world, slumped upon their stools as if they’d partway fallen down.

Not a single murmur was emerging, either, from behind the curtain where the cheaper seats were situated. He went to the screen and drew it back. Passengers and cabin crew, young and old and in between, were slumbering as soundly as a group of tiny infants. Not a single head rose, not a single eyelid flickered. He could think of no sensible explanation for it.

Lizzie Bradman? She was nowhere to be seen in there either. So Holmes turned on his heel and marched up the aisle towards the front of the plane, imagining that she might have moved to some other compartment. Only it turned out that Club Class was the final one, and his footsteps carried him only to the door of the cockpit, which was hanging open.

Holmes peered inside. The pilot and the co-pilot were both slumped on the floor, both fast asleep as well. And Lizzie was at the controls, guiding the airplane towards a runway up ahead. Holmes could see the blocky grey shape of an airport terminal beyond it, almost certainly Frankfurt.

Was he still dreaming? He went quietly inside and sat down in the empty chair. Lizzie was concentrating sternly on completing this final stage of the journey, and she did not turn her head, but by the glint that came into her eyes, the wary moue that appeared on her lips, she was fully aware of his presence.

“The dragons …?” Holmes asked, painfully aware how strained and hushed his own voice had become. “They bore us away from the storm?”

“They kept on carrying us until they reached the edge of dawn,” Lizzie confirmed. “And then, knowing I could do the rest, they let us go and sent us sailing back into our own world.”

This was insane. It was not so much as remotely possible. Holmes recalled the champagne he’d been offered just before the scene around them had suddenly changed. And could that be the explanation? Might this whole affair turn out to be some inexplicable yet devious trick?

“Did you drug my drink?” he asked, believing that he was starting to see the genuine truth of this entire matter and becoming angry. “There are no dragons and there are no sprites!”

All that Lizzie did was shrug.

“I thought that you might have trouble accepting it. So, believe what you want.”

A second later, there was the unmistakable thumping sensation and the frenzied squeal of the plane’s undercarriage hitting ground. Holmes had been so caught up in confusion and accompanying fury that he had lost track of where they were. The flight was at an end – the jetliner was safely down. And, whatever emotions had been surging though him, they were drowned out by a surge of gratitude and of profound relief.

He noticed that his hands were shaking. When he raised one to his cheek, his palm was damp. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow, hit an eyelash and was batted off. Logic, reason, powers of deduction – none of those had been able to help him while he’d been aloft. He’d been as vulnerable as a babe in arms, and it had not been a sensation he’d enjoyed at all.

Through the window of the cockpit he could see two sets of boarding steps being wheeled swiftly up. Vehicles with flashing beacons had closed in around the fuselage, so Lizzie must have radioed ahead.

But then a different sound came drifting to his ears … the murmuring of human voices, from the compartments behind him. All the passengers and crew were waking up.

The murmuring rose swiftly to a startled buzz, the tones of the people back there feverishly excited. It was quite obvious, to Holmes’ mind, what was going on. They were astonished to find themselves securely on the ground. And they were trying to recall precisely what had happened during the course of that catastrophic storm. Had every single one of them dreamt the exact same mad dream?

The pilot and co-pilot both got up, shaking their heads groggily and stumbling away. Holmes could hear the aircraft’s doors being yanked open, and passengers and crew alike began to stream down to ground level.

In a few more minutes, the jetliner was empty save for Lizzie and himself.

He rose up to his feet again, unsure what to think. He headed for the nearest exit, anxious to feel the sun upon his face and breathe fresh air again.

Sherlock Holmes stepped out onto the boarding steps and faltered to a halt, feeling so utterly faint and unbalanced that he had to grasp hold of a rail to keep himself from falling. He was staring at the portside wing.

And it had six deep and straight abrasions on it – claw marks.

When, finally, he turned back to regard Lizzie, she was not there at his side. And he could not find her anywhere, however hard he searched.

ABOVE THE BOULEVARDS

Paris was not merely a city of lights, this particular evening. It was a city of reflected light as well. There’d been a heavy downpour earlier, and the pavements of the boulevards, the bodywork of the cars parked against the kerbs, the tiles of all the sloping roofs … every surface was still damp, and gleamed like a mirror.

It would have been quite beautiful and atmospheric, had not death been on the air.

Sherlock Holmes was on the towpath of the Seine, beneath one of the river’s numerous bridges. There were blue lights flashing on the street above him, numerous gendarmes in evidence. And he was inspecting the general area around a recently discovered corpse.

He did that slowly, with great diligence. And then his attention returned to the grisly cadaver and – as he had done when he’d first seen it – the great detective grimaced.

“An appalling sight, is it not, M’sieu Holmes?” remarked Inspector Fontaine, the police detective who’d had him summoned here. “Should I have it covered up?”

“Not yet,” Holmes muttered.

Then, feeling a slight tugging at his innards, he stepped forwards.

The good inspector had not been exaggerating. Holmes had rarely seen a corpse in such an awful state. There was scarcely a bone in its body that had not been smashed. Its skull was caved in at the top, and its face pounded to a bloody mush. It looked almost as though the man had walked out into the unforgiving pathway of some large, oncoming truck. But Holmes could make out, from the nature of the injuries, that was not so.

“A human being did this,” he informed the inspector, then proceeded to point out several spots where there were bruises in the shape of fingers, perfectly clear evidence the victim had been gripped.

“But what nature of human?” Fontaine gasped. “To display this kind of tremendous strength? Perhaps a giant, or a lunatic?”

Perhaps, Holmes thought, without replying. But it is too early to go jumping to conclusions yet.

He concentrated on the sight before him. And the plain truth of the matter was – whatever crumpled and pathetic state this man had been reduced to – he had, whilst alive, been no pygmy himself. A muscular and burly chap, in fact. Holmes believed he’d worked out regularly at a gym, since there were calluses on his hands that were consistent with weightlifting.

“You have already identified him, you say?”

Which seemed incredible under the circumstances. This sorely mangled piece of flesh would not be recognised by its own mother.

“By some papers in his pocket,” Fontaine confirmed. “He is Henri LeClochet, a doorman at some seedy club in the Pigalle. And the fellow is well known to us.”

“Not in any favourable way?” was Holmes’ assumption.

Fontaine went a little stiff and straight. He was a dapper middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, and with a manner about his bearing which suggested military service earlier on.

“A long criminal record, yes. Theft, violence, extortion by threat of the same. And there have been …”

The inspector stopped and cleared his throat.

“… four allegations against him of assault to women.”

Holmes noticed the way in which the man had coloured slightly, and he did the same.

“By assault, I take it you don’t mean a slap?”

“Indeed. All the cases were dropped, I’m afraid, for insufficient evidence. But this man had a vicious, predatory nature when it came to the gentler sex.”

Which gave Holmes all the confirmation that he needed. He stepped even closer to the body, and then picked up something he’d already spotted lying by its splayed right hand. He examined it for a few seconds, and then held it up for his companion to see.

“Mon dieu!” Fontaine exclaimed.

“Quite! A button off a woman’s coat!” Holmes turned it around between his fingertips. “You see how there are still some cotton threads depending from it? That suggests it was yanked off. Which tells us that this LeClochet was up to his old, filthy tricks again. He was attacking a poor woman underneath this bridge, and someone stopped him.”

“Perhaps more than one person?” Fontaine suggested. “That would explain the state of the corpse. He was forcing himself on some unlucky mademoiselle, and a group of hearty young Parisians intervened and dealt out instant justice.”

He looked towards Holmes with his eyebrows raised, hoping for some kind of validation. But the great detective simply shook his head.

“Observe around our feet, inspector. It rained so heavily, earlier this evening, that the ground under this bridge is wet. It’s slightly muddy too, from the detritus that has collected here. And recent footprints are still clearly visible.”

Holmes moved up even closer to the underside of the bridge.

“Here …” and he pointed, “… is a pair that are high-heeled. The female victim we were speaking of, who must have fled. She was proceeding casually until she reached this point. But beyond it, her footprints have become erratic, and then scuffed. She must have tried to get away, and not succeeded. And she was physically dragged and forced against this wall. That was when this first button came off.

“The second set of footprints, they belong to LeClochet. I’ve already confirmed that by the size and the tread pattern of his shoes. And they are consistent with the original scenario, a large and brutal man waylaying a helpless woman.”

Sherlock paused. Fontaine stared at him breathlessly.

“There is just one other set of prints,” the Englishman continued, “so you can forget your ideas of any mob. A single set, and yet a rather curious pair. Extremely large, half again the size of LeClochet’s. Except the feet are bare.”

He began following them along. How the man could even see them in this lack of lighting was a wonder to Fontaine. He already knew of Holmes’ reputation, naturally. But the fellow had to have the eyes of a wild eagle.

“They first appear, extremely abruptly, here. I believe the man who made them jumped down from the edge of the bridge, and that is quite a leap. They then become erratic too, confirming that a struggle took place. And once the matter was resolved, our barefooted avenger headed for these steps …”

The detective began walking purposefully over to a flight of brick-built steps that led up from the towpath to the avenue above. But then he halted, abruptly and astonishedly.

“Good God!”

“What is it, M’sieu Holmes?” Fontaine inquired, tugging nervously at his moustache.

“The footprints do not reach the staircase. They terminate here. The final pair of them is turned to face the street above. And it looks as if great pressure’s been applied through them. Like …”

Holmes visibly sucked in a breath. And then went racing up the stairs and inspected the railings on the street above. Inspector Fontaine came hurrying up behind him.

“What is it, m’sieu?” he demanded.

“Take a good look at this upper railing.”

Fontaine peered.

“I think … it’s slightly bent.”

“Precisely. And it’s quite hard to believe, I know. But the evidence currently before us … it suggests that our avenger made it from that towpath to this railing in one single, enormous bound.”

“He jumped up here? But …” Fontaine stared down. “… that is a vertical leap of roughly six metres. What manner of man could do that?”

“Were there any witnesses?”

“No, m’sieu. The street was deserted.”

“Damn!”

Holmes took note of where they were, a slightly shabby section of the Left Bank. There were, indeed, no pedestrians abroad, no traffic on the street. And so he hurried across the wet and shiny asphalt to the building facing them, an old and rather down-at-the-heels hotel.

There was a rusty fire escape running along the front of it. And Holmes began ascending that, pausing occasionally to stare at its window ledges, Fontaine still hard on his heels.

“M’sieu Holmes?” the French policeman begged. “What precisely are you looking for?”

“What am I looking at, more like! Again, m’sieu, observe!” His index finger came swinging out like a magnetic compass needle. “Hand and footprints both, enormous ones, on the third storey ledge. Another set of such on the fifth storey. And then, nothing. They give out completely. I believe that our bold vigilante made it from the street below to the roof of this establishment in merely two more massive leaps.”

“Some kind of freakishly huge acrobat?” Poor Inspector Fontaine, he looked utterly nonplussed. “But how can that be possible?”

And Holmes’ eyebrows came together.

“It is not.”

* * *

Nothing more was required of both men for the remainder of the night, nor the following day. But two hours after dusk had fallen, Holmes received another call. He took the Metro from his hotel to the Pigalle, the same district where LeClochet had found employment And once he’d emerged above ground he was appalled by what he saw.

This district of Paris – it had always had a slightly racy reputation. There had been street girls working the broad boulevards here even in his day. But now, the area had been totally disfigured by that kind of trade.

He found himself confronted with a bewildering mass of flashing neon signs. Nearly every single place along this way was given over to pandering to the basest yearnings of the flesh. There were bars and there were clubs, there were bookshops and video stores and grubby little cinemas. Their produce, or photographs of such, were displayed openly in their grimy windowfronts for everyone to see. And outside most of these establishments were barkers, trying to induce the crowds of passing men inside.

Huddled in the doorways of the strip joints and the topless bars were small gaggles of pretty, skinny women, many of them obviously drugged and forcing unconvincing smiles.

It reminded him of Whitechapel back in the Victorian times. How could such as this exist today? He’d always thought of Paris as a quintessentially romantic city. But in this district, romance had been done away with in favour of something considerably more sordid.

Several of the barkers spotted him, identified him immediately as a foreign visitor, and tried to approach him. But all it took was a single severe glance from the great detective’s penetrating eyes, and they changed their minds on that score.

Holmes reached the alleyway he’d been directed to. The gendarmes that were guarding its entrance had obviously been told to expect him, and they waved him through.

Fontaine was waiting inside. And there was another mangled corpse. But this time, there was a weeping teenaged girl as well, being comforted by a uniformed policewoman.

Holmes stared at the lifeless body first, then at the living one of the young woman. She was a brunette, very shapely for her age, and clad in a manner which suggested that she did not make her living on a chair or on her feet. There was a livid bruise on her right cheek.

“I take it that the so-called ‘victim’ is another scoundrel?” Holmes sighed, prodding at the limp cadaver with the toe of his boot.

“Pierre Malliot,” Inspector Fontaine nodded. “An infamous, particularly vicious pimp. The girl – Marie Le Pays – belonged to him. A runway from Avignon, originally.”

Holmes’ face tightened. He would be surprised if she had seen her sixteenth birthday yet. How could human bodies be regarded as so unimportant that they could be traded for a small handful of cash? He peered at the poor girl more closely and saw that, apart from the obvious bruise, there were choke marks around her throat.

“The charming Pierre was roughing her up, I take it?”

Fontaine’s own mouth pursed. “She’d not brought in sufficient income. He was about to cut her with a straight razor – his trademark punishment – when our vigilante intervened.”

He was about to tell the rest to Holmes, but the detective preferred to hear it from the only actual witness. So he stepped across to the girl, and began addressing her in perfect French.

Marie dried her eyes, becoming slightly calmer in his presence.

“Pierre had the razor to my neck, m’sieu,” she told him. “Lord, I was so scared. But, out of nowhere, this other man appeared. And he saved me from him.”

“Describe this other chap?” Holmes asked.

She thought about it.

“Very large.”

“Yes.”

“Crouching.”

“And …?”

“And nothing more. It is too dark in here.” Which was perfectly true. There was no source of electric lighting. “And it all happened so fast. One moment, Pierre had hold of me. The next, he did not. There were a few seconds of scuffling. Then my saviour was gone.”

Holmes took note of that word, ‘saviour’. Then he glanced back at the mangled corpse.

“This other fellow … he did all that damage in a bare handful of seconds?”

And Marie fell silent, unsure how to answer him. So Holmes looked across at the inspector.

“Was anyone apart from these two observed entering or leaving this alley?”

“No one.”

Holmes stared off in both directions for a few moments. “And there’s only one way in or out. So which route did our avenger take?”

His gaze went to the guttering above them. It was five storeys up, a drop of almost sixty feet. And there were no ladders or window ledges.

He and Fontaine were walking back along the boulevard ten minutes later, trying to ignore the vast, unseemly din around them.

“You are suggesting,” the inspector asked, “that someone jumped into that alley, then jumped out again? Or perhaps scaled the vertical walls?”

A thoughtful air overtook the policeman. Except it was replaced, after a few more seconds, by a slightly humorous one.

“Perhaps we are not looking for a man at all? Perhaps, a cleverly trained great ape?”

Holmes smiled at that, recognising the work of fiction the inspector was referring to.

“No,” he demurred. “This is no invention from the mind of Mr Edgar Allan Poe. It is a man who is responsible for what we’ve seen. But something rather more than just a normal one.”

And Fontaine was about to ask him what he meant by that when his mobile phone went off in his pocket.

* * *

It was the Rue St Denis this time, another red light district, not as openly offensive as the Pigalle, but notorious for its great clusters of street girls come the evening time. It was a grubby little hotel off behind the street, in fact. A room on the top storey. And four more villainous-looking characters were lying dead in it, their bodies crushed to pulp.

The room’s window had been smashed, woodwork and all. And Holmes could see immediately from the way the shattered glass was laying that it had been broken through from the outside.

He went across and stuck his head out. There was no fire escape this time. The only way in here was, once again, from the high roof.

“And where are the real victims,” he inquired, “since I’m sure they are not these?”

In the next-door chamber, two young women no older than eighteen and both tearful and distraught were being spoken to by a translator. They were both blonde and attractive, and Holmes could not help but note that one of them had had her clothing torn.

“They are Ukrainian,” Fontaine explained, “and were tricked into coming to this city with the promise of hotel jobs. The men who brought them here were, in fact, part of a gang of human traffickers.”

Holmes stiffened severely. He had heard already of this horrid trade, and the idea of it genuinely appalled him. Why, the people of his good grandfather’s generation, they had fought so hard to do away with slavery. Only for it to re-emerge in this repulsive and inhuman form.

Fontaine was consulting with the translator. He nodded several times, his expression growing angrier. And then he turned to Holmes again.

“Just before our vigilante struck, the thugs, they were about to violate these two. It is the method that these gangs employ to break such girls into a life of prostitution.”

Holmes had heard of that as well, and liked it not one little bit. And a small, satisfied glint appeared in the depths of his hawk-like gaze.

“I never often say this about killers,” he remarked, “but I’m really quite beginning to admire this one.”

Then he began speaking to the Ukrainians through the medium of the translator.

The story was the same as last time. They were terrified by their circumstances, and they thought that all was lost. And then a huge figure had come hurtling straight in through the window. The lights went out at that point, and massive confusion followed. And then, mere seconds later, their potential rapists were all dead. And the fellow who had saved them … he was gone.

“God bless him,” one of the girls added. She was clutching a small silver crucifix about her neck.  “It was as if he was sent to answer our most urgent prayers.”

Which set Holmes thinking along some lines that he had not, until this point.

* * *

“We need a high vantage point,” he told Fontaine the following evening.

But the French inspector had not thought it would be anything like this.

Both men were now standing on the very topmost level of the Eiffel Tower. The wind moaned around them, and the city stretched below them like some impossibly enormous jewel. The normal sounds of traffic and of crowds were lost to them up here. It was like they had detached themselves from everyday reality.

The inspector had brought a walkie-talkie with him, as instructed. It was sitting in his pocket. And Holmes, for his part, had brought along a pair of very powerful field glasses through which he was studying the shimmering cityscape below. He was paying particular attention, Fontaine realised, to the area of river near the centre of the town. But what was the consulting detective looking for?

They waited practically an hour, and Fontaine’s impatience grew. But, out of nowhere, Holmes suddenly jerked.

“What is it?” the inspector demanded.

“I’m not quite sure. But … yes, there!”

He handed the glasses to the inspector, and directed him to the Right Bank of the Seine, quite near the Île de la Cité.　Fontaine concentrated on the busy byways, and at first he could see nothing.

“The rooftops, sir! The rooftops!” Holmes exclaimed.

The inspector shifted his focus higher up … and saw a blur of movement, there in his field of vision for an instant, and then gone. He tried to follow it.

And captured it again. A vast, bustling shape, no more than a living shadow. It was bounding across a long stretch of tiles at what appeared to him to be an incredible speed. And was propelling itself forwards not just with its legs, but with its arms as well, loping along on its knuckles. Which put him in mind of the small joke he’d made yesterday. Except this was not any ape. He caught sight of a swirl of hair, and then a flash of clothing.

So  whatever else this thing might be  it was certainly some kind of man.

It reached a gutter’s edge. The rooftop gave out beyond that. And it only resumed some ten more metres further on. And yet the figure did not even pause.

It flung itself out across the abyss. Fontaine’s jaw dropped, watching that. For he was convinced that this vigilante fellow would fall to his death.

That did not happen.

The massive figure made it to the next stretch of tiles easily, and continued onwards as though nothing in the slightest had stood in its way. And how could any human, unassisted, make a jump like that?

Fontaine’s hands were shaking by this juncture. He lowered the glasses from his face and stared at Holmes bewilderedly.

“But who or what exactly am I looking at?”

The great detective smiled.

“I think, in time, you’ll understand.” And then his manner became far more urgent. “The hour has come for you to make your call, inspector.”

Fontaine struggled for a second, then recalled the walkie-talkie in his pocket. He fished out the device and began to bark an order into it.

Within half a minute, there was a soft, mechanical purring off to the west, which grew swiftly louder till a flying object came in view. It was a police helicopter, which had been hovering in the distance all this while. As the two men watched, it slowed to an uneven halt above them. And a rope ladder came snaking down.

They were already at a dizzying height, the climb still higher and unsteady. None of that much bothered Holmes. But he was pleased to see that Fontaine started up without the slightest hesitation … with a stubbornly determined air, in fact.

Yes, probably once a military man, he thought.

And he had already noticed his companion wore a wedding band. Which would be useful later, when they came to this strange case’s explanation.

* * *

The city revolved beneath them as the helicopter’s pilot homed in on the moving shadow. Holmes could see the Champs Élysée’s ornate lights swinging below him. The expanse of the Tuilleries, and the lengthy, dark bulk of the Louvre.

And then they were closing in on their target, which was still moving extremely swiftly. The pilot of the helicopter switched on a bright spotlight. Then he dropped the craft lower, so that the rooftops of Paris swung up closer into view.

They were so numerous and intricate that they were almost like the paved avenues of another city, suspended above the first. And hurrying along them at that curious, bustling pace they had originally observed was …

Fontaine gasped, hunching forwards in his seat.

“Sacré bleu! It is a man!”

But never had either of them seen a man like this. His feet were, indeed, bare. And his clothing was ragged. The crown of his head was completely bald, wild, unruly hanks of dark hair hanging out beneath it. This looked more like a cross between a gorilla and a homeless madman than a normal human being.

Then it noticed the approaching spotlight, and its huge face swung around. It was terribly misshapen, the brow like a Neanderthal’s, the jaw too wide. Its teeth were snaggled when it grimaced with alarm. And one of its eyes, which had been squinting until this point, widened with the same emotion.

It seemed confused to have been captured by the light. And then the strange creature appeared to get a proper grasp of the circumstances which had overtaken it. And it began to take evasive action.

It changed direction without any warning, loping even faster than before. The spotlight beam emptied out. The pilot cursed beneath his breath and tried to follow, and the centre of Paris swung wildly beneath them once again.

“Over there!” shouted Holmes.

They were back above the apparition in a few more seconds. It did not slow its pace, but glanced up at them across one massive shoulder. And it looked like it was snarling.

It altered course a second time, rushing to the nearest rooftop’s edge and hurling itself out into the void. Which, for any normal person, would have been pure suicide. But this fellow made a jump of at least forty feet as easily as you or I would step over a puddle. And he landed comfortably on the other side.

This went on for several minutes, by the end of which time poor Fontaine was looking visibly ill. The helicopter had been forced to lurch around like a tall ship in a raging tempest, just to keep track of the suspect they were chasing. And the object of their erratic pursuit did not slow down, nor tire in the least.

But finally, he made a grave mistake.

They were deep into the heart of the First Arrondisement, one of the grandest, most expensive parts of this fair city. And there were several dead-straight boulevards here, nothing in the least bit convoluted to them. The man below had put himself on one of those. There was a steady row of tiles before him which led almost to the gleaming floodlights of the Arc de Triomphe. And no way off it. No alternative avenues to take.

“We’ve got him!” Fontaine crowed.

Holmes smiled tightly, maintaining his silence. But the French policeman did not even notice that.

The bubble-sided craft that they were in hung behind the loping fugitive, driving him continually forwards. And when the fellow realised the predicament that he was in – when he tried to swivel around and then go back the other way – the pilot dropped the helicopter lower still, blocking off his one escape route.

So that in the end said fugitive was forced onto the very last rooftop. There was no way left from here but down. And Fontaine had had the presence of mind to radio ahead. There were the crews of a dozen police vehicles waiting for him.

The figure ducked into the shadow of a nearby chimneypot. Fontaine waited for it to emerge. And when it did not, the pilot swung his craft around and shone the spotlight down again.

It revealed absolutely nothing.

“But … where’s he gone?” Fontaine yelled.

The tight smile – it was still right there on Sherlock Holmes’ face.

“In a sense, inspector, he was never really there at all.”

* * *

There was a tall, modern hotel near the Bourse which had a helipad, and Holmes had the pilot set them down there. Poor Fontaine had been struck by the events he’d witnessed into utter silence. And it was only when they reached the street that he began to speak again.

“But what can you possibly mean, M’sieu Holmes? How can someone be both ‘there’ and ‘not there’.”

Holmes chose the route for them, heading in an easterly direction, closing in upon the Seine.

“Are you much of a student of philosophy, inspector?”

Which got him a wordless and bug-eyed response.

“The German, Friedrich Nietzsche, once proposed this theory: that if the need for a new god is strong enough, if the longing for its existence is powerful and sincere enough, then that god might come into existence.”

They were crossing another street, getting nearer to the river. And Fontaine was still staring at the great detective like he’d gone insane.

“The things I’ve seen over the past few years lead me to believe that there might be some truth in that,” Holmes pointed out obliviously. “And if a god can be created that way, why not other types of being? Ones that everybody is familiar with, and yet were previously thought to exist only in the imagination.”

They were beside the river now, and heading up towards an ornate bridge.

“What was required in these cases was not a god exactly, good Fontaine, but – to use Marie Le Pays’ precise word – a saviour.”

“A—?”

“Think of it!” Holmes insisted. “That sad, under-aged runaway, assaulted by a violent pimp who was about to use a razor on her. Those unfortunate Ukrainian girls, tricked here with the prospect of a better life and then finding themselves in a seedy hotel room, in imminent danger. And that unknown woman on the towpath of this very river, struggling in the lecherous clutches of the brutish LeClochet. How great their need? How powerful their longing to be saved? And theirs cannot be the only stories, in a city of this size. How many thousands more oppressed women cry out, in the terrified depths of their hearts, for some almighty saviour?”

They had walked across the short bridge, and were heading down the quiet, deserted central street of the Île de la Cité.  And Fontaine was now peering at Holmes curiously, blinking slowly. Beginning to see the sense of this, but still unsure of what the Englishman was driving at.

“And so one has come into existence,” Holmes explained. “One that we are all familiar with – Paris’ most famous rescuer of any woman. The man who would have given his life and his very soul to have saved his beloved Esmerelda.”

And the two detectives came to a halt in front of the darkly magnificent bulk of Notre Dame Cathedral.

“Yes, the Hunchback himself has returned to Paris,” Sherlock whispered.

Fontaine’s mouth dropped open and his cheeks turned red.

“But, m’sieu, that is only a work of fiction.”

“Until now,” Holmes smiled.

And he stepped across, tipped back his head. And then he yelled out.

“Quasimodo?”

Sure enough, the shadows to the side of one spire moved. And then a human figure parted company from the general mass of darkness. Fontaine could only make it out in silhouette, but it was massive and crouched over. And he knew it was the same one that they’d been pursuing in the helicopter.

The inspector was thunderstruck. His frame went rigid and his face was drained of blood. And for a while, it looked like he’d stopped breathing. But then he forced himself to draw in a lungful of air, and attempted to compose himself.

He managed it only partially, and still looked very flustered.

“But, m’sieu,” he blurted, turning to Holmes, “what am I to do? I am a sworn officer of the law, so how do I resolve this?”

“You could go up there and try to arrest him, I suppose,” Holmes said. “I doubt, despite his great strength, he would do you any harm. But you saw what happened on the rooftops when we cornered him. He’s not a normal man in that respect.”

Fontaine shook his head, bemused.

“Then what?”

“It’s not my business to tell you how to do your job,” Holmes answered dryly. “But can I ask you a question? I see that you are married. And I take it that you have a family?”

The inspector straightened. “Indeed. I have three beautiful daughters, the eldest of whom is studying at the Sorbonne. They are the light of my life, sir, my greatest pride and joy.”

At which, Holmes’ expression became practically droll.

“Then might I suggest that they could walk these streets more safely with the fellow up there watching over them?”

Fontaine took a while absorbing what was being proposed. But when he’d finally worked his mind around it, his own demeanour became vaguely humorous, a gleam of irony appearing in his eyes.

“You know what, M’sieu Holmes?” he offered. “All these supernatural events? They seem to have had a strange effect on me. I have suddenly become clairvoyant, and can see a good long way into the future. And can confidently predict that this case, and others like it in the years to come … they will never be solved.”

Holmes beamed back at him. And then Fontaine returned his attention to the huge, crouched figure on the ramparts.

He had gone stiff as a ramrod, and he raised his right hand to his forehead in a swift, precise salute.

“It is not au revoir then, M’sieu ‘unchback!” he called up. “It is adieu! Et merci! And good hunting, mon vieux!”

Holmes nodded approvingly at that.

And then, without another word, the two men turned around and walked away. They made no further comment on the matter, and neither of them – not for the tiniest instant – made the slightest attempt to look back.

They were in sore need of refreshment after their exertions. And Fontaine, naturally, knew of an excellent little café nearby.

The air around them was mild and sweet smelling. The murmur of the city’s traffic seemed extremely distant. And Holmes believed that he could hear a nightingale singing close by.

Ah, he thought happily, what is there that could ever be the match of such a fine evening in Paris?

THE CRIMEWAVE

So at last he was back in London. He had been avoiding a visit for quite a considerable while now, since the whole atmosphere of the place, in its modern incarnation, discomforted him somewhat.

He had spent a good long while here during the course of the Second World War, helping the government in any way he could on matters of espionage, intelligence-gathering and analysis. His keenly honed intellect, his insights into human nature and his huge skills as a master of disguise had been especially useful in that regard.

But those adventures had come to a close before the middle of the 20th Century, and things had changed in London town an awful lot since then. Large parts of the city barely looked the same as they had done in his time. And yes, the Blitz had been in good measure responsible for that. But the way that some areas had been rebuilt was nothing short of shocking. And it wasn’t that he disliked every single style of modern architecture. He was rather keen on that fantastic Ferris wheel down by the River Thames that went by the name of the ‘London Eye’, and had ridden on it several times. And there was a tower of glass and steel – nicknamed ‘The Gherkin’ – which he thought of as quite wonderful and pleasing to the eye.

Too much of his beloved home, however, had been given over to great featureless and soulless slabs of concrete, and it hurt his pride to see it. Shakespeare had once written that the first thing people ought to do was ‘hang all the lawyers’. Perhaps the better candidates for a swift lynching these days were the architects?

And then there was the manner in which the people of this great metropolis presently dressed and comported themselves. Barely anybody who was not compelled to do so by his job wore a proper suit and tie any longer. Bowler hats and rolled umbrellas had been consigned to the same distant chapter of history as the triceratops. He was standing on one of the most expensive shopping streets in the whole city, and the only thing that he could see around him was casual dress.

Hundreds wandered by him, chewing gum and swigging from plastic bottles and chattering obliviously on their mobile phones. As with their clothing, there was nothing in the least bit formal about the way they went about their daily business. Nothing stern or upright or controlled or … well, or British. They had adopted to the last – at least to his eye – an almost Southern Californian attitude. The younger people even went so far as to address each other as ‘man’ or ‘dude’, and that offended him on the most basic level. What on Earth had happened to the denizens of his homeland?

A teenaged girl in scanty denim clothes with sequined patterns on them bumped into him accidentally, mumbled some form of vague apology that practically came out as a laugh, and then went back to texting on her iPhone as she wandered past. Good manners – it was apparent – had joined bowler hats in history’s refuse bin.

“Is anything wrong, Mr Holmes?” asked Detective Inspector Charlie Rooker.

A small crease appeared on the bridge of Sherlock Holmes’ prominent nose.

“Ah … why do you ask that?”

“You seem rather distracted, that’s all.”

The great detective thought that over, and then forced a weary smile.

“When you’re my age, Inspector, … hah … you get distracted rather easily.”

He turned his mind back to the case in hand.

They were stood before the broad front window of Perrington Whittleys of Bond Street, possibly the most high-class jeweller in the whole of Mayfair. Double-decker buses rumbled by in a constant stream on Oxford Street, to the north of here, whileto the south Holmes could hear the murmur of the dense traffic on Piccadilly. There was no broken glass around his shoes, and no alarms were sounding. Nobody was hurt or injured. But the place had been subjected, slightly more than an hour ago, to a most extraordinary armed robbery. All of the most expensive pieces had been taken.

When they went inside the staff were still in shock. They were being tended to by members of the St John’s Ambulance service, who had wrapped blankets around them and were handing them cups of weakly brewed tea and talking to them soothingly. None of them, not even the store’s manager, looked capable of being interviewed at present, and so Holmes directed his attention elsewhere.

“There is CCTV footage of the incident, I take it?” he asked, pointing to a camera in the ceiling.

Charlie Rooker nodded. “I’ve already looked at it myself. And I warn you, Mr Holmes, you’re going to find it pretty hard to believe.”

“You’d be surprised what I’d believe these days,” Holmes corrected his brand new companion.

Then he followed the man through to a concealed room at the rear.

* * *

The footage was, indeed, remarkable. Perrington Whittley dealt with the general public in the same way as most jewellers: you could not simply walk in from the street. The front door was permanently shut. There was another closed circuit camera above it, feeding to a TV screen inside the store. Anybody who wished to gain entry had to first press a doorbell, then allow themselves to be submitted to inspection. If the staff inside were satisfied with what they saw, a button was depressed, at which point the lock would buzz open. It reset itself automatically as soon as the prospective customer was safely inside.

But none of that had happened in this case. Holmes stared at the monitor with burgeoning bewilderment.

One moment, the inside of the store was empty save for its three members of staff. The manager was on the phone. One of his younger subordinates was polishing the top of a display counter while the other one was tallying receipts.

Suddenly, the criminal was there on the screen in front of everybody’s gaze. The door had not been opened, and he had appeared from nowhere.

“Are you sure this tape has not been doctored?” Holmes asked the inspector.

“It’s not a tape, it’s a recordable CD,” Charlie Rooker told him. “And no, absolutely not.”

He had seen stranger things the last few years, he supposed. Holmes returned his full attention to the monitor.

The reaction of the staff, quite predictably, was that they jumped with fright, then froze with terror. Holmes was of the strong opinion that – once they’d recovered from the initial shock – they could have overpowered this intruder very easily. There were three of them, after all. And the criminal was small and slight, a young Asian man with his hair cut into fashionable spikes. He was as casually dressed as anyone in London these days – jeans and trainers and a T-shirt with the legend ‘Coldplay’ on it. And he was not armed.

But here was the second very curious thing. He was holding out his right arm and the corresponding hand as though he were clutching a pistol. And the hapless shopkeepers … they were reacting as if he had one. Every time those curved-up fingers swung in their direction, they cringed and became submissive. Their bodies drew back and their raised hands shook.

There was no audio on this CD. The robber’s lips moved soundlessly. The shop staff nodded briskly and then hurried to obey his every last instruction. Within another half a minute, the best items of jewellery were being taken out from their display cases and loaded into a small backpack that the thief had brought along with him.

“They really thought he had a gun?” Holmes asked.

“They swear it, every one of them. A great big nickel-plated revolver, like a Magnum or something.”

Holmes squinted from several angles, but could still make out no firearm of any kind.

“The thief is a master of illusion, perhaps?”

“The thief is in our custody, like all the rest. He’s a master of precisely nothing, just an ordinary kid. And like the ones before, he’s claiming to remember nothing. I kind of believe him.”

It was the tenth case of this kind in less than a fortnight. Which was the real reason that the great detective was back in London. His home town was in the grip of a most extraordinarily peculiar type of crimewave.

And he had been summoned back by no lesser a personage than the Prime Minister himself.

* * *

Rooker drove Holmes back to the police station where the jewel thief was being held. It wasn’t a long trip, but it gave Holmes a further opportunity to study the city he’d inhabited for most of his earlier life. The traffic was snarled, the drivers aggressive, the gutters littered. Music blasted from car windows and open doorways, and the crowds on the pavements shoved past each other in a manner more befitting to New York. There was, nonetheless, a massive sense of energy about the place he could not help but be impressed by. The weather was currently pleasant, and the outdoor tables of every café and bar were crowded to overflowing. People were conversing energetically, thousands of notions and ideas being exchanged within the space of a bare few city blocks. People moved so quickly in this place these days because they were extremely busy. They were preoccupied because they had a lot of things to do.

Not so awful, really, he decided. Dignity, formality, civility might be extinct, but they had been replaced by industry and creativity on a truly vast, chaotic scale. Who knew what new wonders might emerge from such a seething cauldron of activity?

The place had become a melting pot as well. Charlie Rooker’s Ford Mondeo was passing by pedestrians of every imaginable hue and nationality. Some of them were visiting, but many of them lived here. And Holmes understood that that was a controversial issue, but he personally considered it a good thing. People from across the whole globe wanted to live in this vast and turbulent city, eager for the opportunities it gave them.

If he was not mistaken, though, a slight air of edginess had overcome the general public. People had become aware of this baffling string of crimes, and were wondering what might happen next time, and to whom.

Then he switched his attention to his new accomplice.

Detective Inspector Rooker had to be in his late thirties. Like the thousands on the streets, he was not wearing any suit. The policeman was clad in stonewashed jeans, a suede jacket and matching boots, and a purple shirt that was open at the neck. His hair had grown down to his collar – old Lestrade, he would have had a fit. And although he spoke in the manner of an educated man, his accent was pure East London. Stepney to be precise, Holmes had already decided.

But he was obviously intelligent and watchful. His dark green eyes missed very little, and he brought a quietly determined air with him to everything he undertook. That was Holmes’ first impression of him, at least. And during their short time together, it had not been in the slightest way diminished.

They parked in a cobbled lane behind a large grey building, and Holmes followed Rooker through a door.

“The perpetrator’s name is Raj Noor,” the inspector told Holmes as they walked along an echoing corridor. “Twenty-two years old, from Walthamstow. No criminal record whatsoever, not even a parking ticket.”

“Employed?” Holmes asked.

“He works in a record shop in Soho.” Which was merely a short walk from Perrington Whittleys, Soho being one side of the Regent Street divide and Mayfair the other. “In fact, he was there a few minutes before he committed the crime. According to his boss, he was attending to some customers, when he suddenly stopped talking and went rather stiff. And then simply walked out onto the street. His boss went out and shouted after him, but our Raj took no notice.”

“It sounds possible that he might have been mesmerised, or else subjected to some form of post-hypnotic trigger.”

Except that that didn’t even start to explain the way that he had appeared in the jewellery store, or the non-existent gun. And both men knew that.

“And you found him where?” the great detective asked.

“In a dead-end alleyway on the north side of Oxford Street.” Which was, once again, only a short walk away. “Several people saw him going in there. He was standing there when we arrived, just staring into space. And he still had the backpack, but the thing was empty. All the jewellery was gone.”

They stopped in front of a cell door. Rooker nodded to the duty sergeant who’d accompanied them the last part of the way.

Holmes could hear a dismal weeping coming from inside that confined space, even before the key was turned and the heavy metal door swung open. Then he was confronted by an utterly confounding sight.

Here was the young man in question, sitting on a low bench at the far end of the barren cell. Holmes could make out that his wrists had been cuffed until quite recently. But to identify him as the felon he had watched in action on the security footage … that was quite impossible at present, because his face was not visible.

The unfortunate Raj Noor was doubled over like a paperclip, his dark head level with his knees. Both his hands were covering his face, and his shoulders were quivering spasmodically. Indeed, his entire frame was being racked with massive sobs. The fellow was crying so fiercely that his bare forearms were slick with tears the entire way down to the elbows.

“He’s been like this since we locked him in,” the duty sergeant told the two detectives. “Guilty conscience finally got the better of him, if you ask me.”

“I’d genuinely doubt that,” Holmes said quietly.

His remark annoyed the man, who walked away and left them to it.

Under Rooker’s piercing gaze, the great detective walked gently across, stopped in front of the young suspect, and then crouched down until they were both at the same height. He reached out tentatively, brushed the fingers of one hand across the fellow’s shoulder. Raj Noor flinched, then finally looked up.

His fingers parted so that Holmes could see his eyes. And they were red-rimmed, bloodshot, damp to overflowing. That much he’d already been expecting. But there was something else there in those dark brown irises that were staring back at him.

Holmes had looked into the gaze of many villains in the past, and this man was not one of them.

He began talking softly, in a very even tone.

“Listen to me now, Raj. I fully understand how frightened and upset you are. But giving in to those emotions – it will do you not the slightest good. You must calm down and talk to me.”

And to Rooker’s surprise, Holmes’ words – perhaps simply the way he spoke them – seemed to have a very fast effect. The flow of tears abated, and the boy stopped shaking. He wiped one hand across his sodden cheeks, then stared at the detective mournfully.

“Is there anything that you can do to help me, sir?”

A gentle smile returned to Sherlock Holmes’ lips. This was the first time since he had come back to London – outside of his hotel – that anyone had addressed him in that manner. Raj was obviously a very polite and well brought-up young chap. His hand went back over to the fellow’s shoulder, stayed there.

“I’m going to do my best. Please be assured of that. But I am going to need your full co-operation.”

The boy in front of him nodded.

“You must tell me precisely what happened.”

“I was in the shop. I was dealing with some customers. They were trying to get hold of the special gold edition of a Nine Inch Nails album. Expensive, and hard to find.”

“Can you describe these customers?”

“The girl was pretty, sir, like in a hippyish way. The bloke was tall and blond. Both Dutch, I think.”

Holmes absorbed that, uncertain if it was relevant.

“And did they say or do anything odd?”

“Not a thing, sir. Not that I recall.”

“And then?”

“It all went black.”

“You couldn’t see?”

“I couldn’t … do anything at all. It was like I’d left my body, sir. Like I was floating in a void.”

“So you were not aware of anything?” Holmes pressed him. “Walking down to Bond Street? Entering the jeweller’s shop?”

Raj Noor’s head shook rather frantically. “Not a single thing about it. I just can’t believe that …”

Emotion began to overtake the unhappy young man again. Fresh tears welled up in his eyes and his shoulders resumed their nervous trembling.

“I’ve never stolen anything in my whole life, sir. What am I going to do?”

Holmes shushed and tutted, rubbing the boy’s shoulder with his fingertips until he’d calmed him down a little again. Or at least, that was what it looked like. It was actually a method of controlling the whole nervous system he had learned in the Far East.

“So the next thing you remember is …?”

“Standing in that dingy alley. Wondering how I’d got there. I was still there when the police came to get me.”

“And of the intervening period you recall not a single thing?” Holmes’ expression tautened. “Think, man. Your entire future might depend on what you tell me.”

Raj could see how serious the great detective was. He dried his face a second time. His breathing steadied, his expression turning pensive. And at first, he simply looked quite blank. But then a memory appeared to come to him, at least part of the way. He was obviously struggling to retrieve it, and he rubbed pensively at his brow.

“While I was out of it, I thought that I could hear something. Only in the background, very faintly.”

“Whilst you were floating in the darkness?”

“Yes. It was …” Raj pressed his thumb and index finger deep into the corners of his swollen eyes, “… I think it was laughter, sir. But not humorous. Nasty, mocking laughter, as if somebody was playing a cruel trick on me.”

Holmes took a few moments digesting that.

Then, “Yes indeed, I think they might have been,” he finally opined.

And he looked around at Charlie Rooker, who pursed his lips and nodded.

* * *

There were two more stops to make. The first was to the record shop on Brewer Street where Raj Noor had been working. They met with his boss, a large and gruff but basically amicable man who assured them that young Raj had been, up until the moment he had inexplicably walked out, a model employee – eager, polite, punctual and scrupulously honest.

“I can’t believe what he’s gone and got up to,” the fellow huffed. “He’s the last person you’d expect to do anything like that.”

“Indeed.”

Holmes noticed that this establishment had its own closed-circuit camera, and asked to see the footage. And on it he found the customers that Raj had been serving before he had embarked on his crime spree.

They were precisely as the suspect had described them: a slim, waif-like young woman and a taller, rather muscular blond man. Raj had been right … they were both Dutch. Holmes could tell that by the brands of clothing that they wore, and a tattoo on the gentleman’s right bicep. By the condition of the pupils of their eyes, they were regular smokers of hashish and, observing the casual, cosmopolitan air they had about them, he had little doubt they hailed from Amsterdam.

They were smiling, mild and pleasant in the way they dealt with Raj. Neither of them once looked grim, or tried to hold his gaze for long. Holmes watched the recording through three times, hoping to pick up something he had previously missed. And was finally left with the conclusion that neither of this couple were responsible for Raj’s misfortune.

Both detectives headed back to Rooker’s Ford Mondeo, which was being studied by a traffic warden with a beady eye.

“Where to now, guv?” Rooker asked.

“I want to see the alley where the lad was found.”

“If he’s responsible for what he’s done, I’ll eat my bleedin’ warrant card,” the police inspector grunted on the way, turning his steering wheel.

“And the rest? The other nine?”

“Exactly the same as Raj. Honest, decent people with no history of any wrongdoing. Each of them shocked, bewildered, with not the slightest memory of what they’d done.”

“But – unless the law has changed a great deal since I’ve been away – that will not save them when they stand before a judge, now will it?”

“No, it won’t.” And Rooker looked exasperated. “I didn’t join the Force to send a bunch of innocent people down.”

They reached the alley, having to push their way through a double-column of Korean tourists to enter it. And it might have been situated behind one of the most salubrious parts of London’s West End, but it was a mightily dingy place. Narrow, crammed in between high brick walls. Damp and slightly malodorous. Barely any light managed to make its way in here. The short lane ended at a graffiti-scribbled wall, with a loosely grouped collection of large plastic refuse bins beside it.

“Those were checked for the stolen jewellery?” Holmes asked.

Charlie Rooker glanced back at him somewhat crookedly.

“I may not be a great detective, Mr Holmes,” he pointed out, “but I’m not a bad one either.”

“No, of course not,” Holmes said quickly. “I meant no offence. It’s just that …”

He pivoted around, gazing at his grim surroundings with a look of utter disbelief.

“Why would young Raj wind up here? No, none of this makes any sense.”

* * *

Maybe the officials at the Home Office considered it appropriate, but they had rented him a suite – at Her Majesty’s expense – at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street, not too far from his old flat. The area had changed somewhat, but he was not displeased. His rooms were sumptuous. The staff were courteous to a fault. And he was able to revisit an old habit he had not indulged in for a good few decades.

When had he lost his lovely Meerchaum pipe? He couldn’t quite remember. It had dropped out of his pocket somewhere, either during a fistfight with a Gestapo thug in Berlin, 1944, or while he’d been in hot pursuit of a terrorist chief in Marrakesh. But now he was able to visit the hotel’s gift shop and buy an exact replica. A second visit to a nearby tobacconist provided him with the correct material with which to fill it. They still stocked his old brand, albeit that the packaging had changed. And now he was sitting in the largest of his rooms, puffing contentedly away. The hotel’s management had already had the foresight to disable the suite’s smoke alarms.

Should he buy a violin as well, perhaps? No, how would he transport it when he left here? And as for his predilection for cocaine – well, that was a very seedy matter these days, and would involve riding to nearby Camden Town and hanging about on dank street corners with a bunch of petty criminals. So he contended himself with ordering up the tallest glass the staff could manage of pina colada.

He switched on the television, gazed bemusedly for a few minutes at something that called itself a ‘talent show’, then grunted and switched it off. The way that he puffed on his pipe became far less contented, more disgruntled as he worked the case through his mind all over again.

He had believed at first these crimes might be the result of some form of hypnotism. He had come across such instances before. But the way that Raj Noor had described his hideous experience … it sounded like no form of hypnotism he had ever come across. And besides, there appeared to have been no attempt made to enslave the poor lad’s mind in the first place. He had already established that.

Perhaps he ought to go back to the station house and question some of the other suspects? But Holmes already felt quite sure that they would tell him the same story.

There was something really quite appalling going on here. And it was not the work of any ordinary man. Why pick on people who were utterly blameless? How could they be made to suddenly appear inside a jeweller’s, a safe deposit vault, a bank? And why did people believe that they had a gun when no weapon existed?

The natural laws, both physical and mental, were being tampered with quite dreadfully in this particular case. And he couldn’t imagine what kind of being had the kind of power to do that.

Holmes sank back in his chair and puffed and pondered until almost dawn. Occasionally, a glowing ember would come flying up and burn a small hole in his jacket, but he didn’t even notice that.

* * *

Three more days saw three more crimes, each of them so strange that they made the front pages of most of the national newspapers. A Polish au pair on her second week in town entered the Belgravia home of a publishing millionaire, terrorising the man’s family and making off with several hundred thousand pounds in jewellery and cash. A promising law student, just nineteen years old, went into the British Museum, threw a brick through a display case, and took several priceless Egyptian relics. And a newsvendor in his mid-forties – a cheerful man, well liked by the people in his area – suddenly appeared in the vaults of the Krigge-Schumann Bank in Knightsbridge. When he disappeared again, a number of gold bars went with him.

What might happen next? The atmosphere out on the streets grew noticeably worse. The whole metropolis was slightly panicked.

Each of the perpetrators was apprehended swiftly and with not the slightest resistance. Each was in a state of profound shock. Holmes interviewed them carefully. And, as he’d expected, their stories were all precisely the same as Raj Noor’s had been: they’d gone outside their bodies, and had not been the slightest bit aware what they’d been doing.

“Did you hear anything while you were in that state?” Holmes asked them, staring deep into their eyes.

Which, to the last, went blank a second, before flaring with a sudden recognition.

“It was very faint,” the Polish girl murmured, her nose blocked up from crying.

“But I thought I could hear laughter,” said the law student, still shaking.

“Cruel laughter,” added the newsvendor. “Makes me sick to think about it.”

“Some kind of malevolent poltergeist?” suggested Charlie Rooker as the final cell door closed behind them and they walked away.

Sherlock Holmes’ eyebrows came up.

“Do you really believe in such things, Inspector?”

Rooker looked awkward.

“Not normally, no. But – I hope you don’t mind, Mr Holmes – I’ve been following your career of late, newspaper reports and such. And it seems to me you’ve come across a few things that don’t answer any normal explanation.”

Holmes smiled mildly. “Yes, a few. I’m flattered that you’ve paid such interest. And your notion of a poltergeist might be near to the truth. But an exceptionally malevolent one, wouldn’t you say?”

When Rooker looked to him for explanation, he continued.

“It’s not merely committing crimes. It’s letting blameless people carry the can for each of them. There’s no telling who it will take over next, or where it will show up. In short, it’s throwing this entire population into turmoil.”

The inspector nodded when he saw Holmes’ point.

“A hateful being indeed. But why do you suppose it’s trying to cause so much damage?”

They reached the open street. Holmes tilted his face towards the sun, lowering his eyelids, and took a deep breath. He was relieved to be away from the cells. But he could not get rid of the feeling – it had been with him the past couple of days – that he was somehow being watched. It was only a faint instinct and he’d mentioned it, so far, to no one.

“And that goes to the heart of it, Inspector. Motive. What possible use would a poltergeist have for cash and valuables in the first place? Did you ever think of that?”

Charlie Rooker’s face went very still. Holmes managed to force a grin. He took a notebook from his pocket, scribbled an address and tore the sheet off.

“Meet me here at eight o’clock this evening please, Inspector. We are hopefully going to lay this poltergeist of ours to rest.”

* * *

London was a city most attractive in the twilight. The pace of life grew gentler. The streetlights – coming slowly on – gave the nearby walls and paving stones a gently burnished glow. Holmes was standing in a leafy square in Chelsea, watching while a flock of starlings spun in dizzying patterns above the high rooftops. He only looked away from them when a familiar car drew up.

“What’s this all about, guv?” Charlie Rooker asked when he got out. “Why do you suppose our poltergeist might show up here?”

“Because I’m going to invite him,” Holmes replied. “In fact, I’m going to dare him.”

When Charlie Rooker looked completely blank again, he pointed to a massive house that occupied one entire half of one side of the square. There were Rolls Royces and Bentleys parked outside it. And as the two detectives watched, a stretched limousine pulled up, a couple were disgorged. The man was in full evening dress, complete with cummerbund. The woman wore a sparkly ball gown, a fur stole and a tiara.

“That is one of the homes of the multi-billionaire Mikhail Verduchin,” Holmes explained.

“Blimey! The bloke who owns …?” And Rooker named a famous premier league football club.

“If you say so. But tonight he is hosting a charity ball of such opulence, of such accumulated wealth, that it rated mention in every single one of this morning’s better papers.”

Holmes had had them all delivered to his suite, and had studied them assiduously.

When Rooker looked more carefully, he could see that there were several heavy-set men in dark suits perched outside the house. He spotted a coiled flex leading to an earpiece, and surmised that these were privately hired security types. Ex-army by the look of them, with probably a number more inside. It would take a lunatic to go in there and attempt to commit a robbery.

“Nearly every wealthy person in this city is inside that house tonight,” Holmes went on. “Bankers and businessmen. Magnates and moguls. Pop stars and sporting heroes. All of them bejewelled and Rolexed to the eyeballs. And how could our poltergeist resist such a tasty and high-profile delicacy?”

“But what makes you so sure …?”

“I am certain because he’s nearby. I can feel it. He has become aware of my presence during the course of the last couple of days, and is taking a close interest in me.”

Rooker started glancing round.

“Oh, you won’t see him, Inspector,” Sherlock Holmes informed the man. “But he can see you. He can clearly see the pair of us.” Then he turned towards the centre of the square and spread his arms. And bellowed, “Can’t you!”

At which, utter confoundment overcame Inspector Rooker. He’d had – up until this point – the greatest of respect for Holmes. But now the most famous detective in the world was standing on an open street and shouting into thin air like some drunken maniac.

“Mr Holmes?”

But Holmes ignored him.

“You know I’m here!” he continued in the self-same wild and elevated tone. “Yes, you know I’m back in London! And it would please you mightily to lay me low, humiliate me, make me look a fool! So here’s your chance! Come on now – do your worst!”

The security men in front of the house were starting to take an interest. They were consulting with someone in the background, pressing their hands to their wired ears. And a few moments after that, a couple of them began walking carefully across.

“Mr Holmes!” repeated Rooker, far more forcefully this time.

And he started reaching for the great detective’s arm … when two things happened simultaneously.

He suddenly went slack, his own hand dropping back down by his side.

And then the men across the street went still as statues.

* * *

There was a part of Holmes that could only marvel at the power of this adversary he was facing. Taking over one soul at a time was impressive enough. But to freeze an entire security contingent into position? One of the men who’d been approaching him was caught in mid-stride. Another had his head bowed, and was unable to bring it up.

They might as well be dead, although they were not that. But they’d certainly be of no further use when it came to protecting the guests inside the house.

And then he looked around at Charlie Rooker. And what he saw practically chilled his blood.

To all intents and purposes, the police inspector looked precisely the same as he had done a few seconds before. The same manner of dress. The same collar-length hair. Nothing about his features or his poise had altered.

But his face had gone as hard as stone. His expression was not merely grim – there was a strange cruelty to the tilt of his lips and the slanting of his eyelids. Furrows that had not been there had appeared on his brow, and there was a heavy crease across the bridge of his nose that had not been present earlier either. The same face it might still be, except it had been subtly transformed by malicious intent.

It was a criminal’s visage he was staring into, not one of an officer of the law.

And then, there was that strange dark glint that had appeared in Rooker’s eyes. No CCTV camera, however advanced, could ever have picked it up. If a person’s eyes were indeed the windows to his soul, then these windows were looking in upon a psyche so malevolent it almost seemed to nullify any surrounding light. There was coldness. There was hollowness. And there was not a flicker of humanity.

Before Holmes could react any further, Rooker raised his right arm, holding it out straight. Exactly as the previous victims had described, there was a massive nickel-plated pistol clutched between his fingers. And Holmes knew perfectly well that the inspector had not previously been armed.

Rooker thumbed back the hammer, and it clicked into position.

An illusion, the great detective told himself. Except it looked – and even sounded – real.

But, during earlier sojourns in the Far East, Holmes had let himself be trained in various forms of mind control. And he employed those methods now. He forced himself to steady his breathing. Calmed himself and cleared his head. Closed his eyes for a few seconds, muttering a silent mantra.

And when he opened his lids again, the gun looked a great deal less substantial than it had been. Almost transparent, in fact. He squinted at it from a slightly different angle. And it disappeared from view entirely for a second before wavering back.

Quite an interesting trick, all the same, Holmes mused.

He started to reach out for Rooker’s wrist. Only to discover that his limbs were frozen into place, exactly the same way the security guards’ had been.

The most appalling, ugly smile distorted Charlie Rooker’s features.

“And so, the world’s greatest detective, powerless at last,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. “This is a sight worth a king’s whole ransom.”

Even Rooker’s voice had changed – it had become gravelly and lifeless. Holmes tried to respond, but found that he could not even do that.

“But why pay a king’s ransom,” the man continued, “when you can take one. See you later, Sherlock Holmes.”

And without any slightest warning, he vanished. Was that an illusion too, or evidence of some far greater supernatural power?

* * *

Within half a minute, screams began emerging from the interior of Verduchin’s house. Holmes could not see anything of what was going on, but he could guess. Charlie Rooker – or at least the creature who’d possessed him – was robbing the massed inhabitants. Holding them at gunpoint, and then stripping them of all their pricey finery, their wallets and their watches. Not genuinely a king’s ransom, perhaps. But he had watched the people going in, and guessed there had to be at least a million pounds worth of valuables in there.

He struggled to move, employing other techniques that were intended to control the mind and body. And the only thing that he could manage was to shake with rage. He could not lift a finger.

Rooker reappeared within ten more minutes, striding out through the mansion’s front door. There was no longer any sign of the bogus pistol by this time, but he was carrying in his left hand a large bag which was weighed down very heavily. In fact, the haul of booty was so large that the inspector’s whole body was tilted to one side, his shoulders being dragged across diagonally by the burden. And Charles Rooker was not a slight or an unhealthy man.

He began half-jogging, half-limping along the pavement, heading for the north side of the square. Night had fallen fully by this stage. The man was reduced to a silhouette in a bare handful of seconds. And he had almost gone from view … when Holmes found himself able to move again.

He jerked forwards, practically stumbling. Steadied himself and drew in a deep, angry breath. Either the strange being who had possessed the inspector was no longer in control – or he was being toyed with!

It made no difference, he supposed. A very bizarre game was certainly afoot. No sirens were approaching, so it seemed that no one had alerted the authorities as yet. And so this whole business was up to him to finish. Holmes started off, at a run, in the direction that his companion had disappeared. He was not burdened in the way that Rooker was, and ought to catch up with him easily enough.

That proved to be the case. Holmes hit the Fulham Road and caught sight of Inspector Rooker’s streetlit outline hobbling away from him in a westerly direction. He thought of calling out, but reckoned that would be of little use. And so he put every effort into overtaking the policeman, his feet pounding on the paving stones and his breath burning in his lungs.

Charlie Rooker crossed the road and ducked away along another side street. He had pretty much left Chelsea now. Motor horns blared at Holmes as he hit the asphalt in pursuit, but the great detective did not flinch or make the slightest alteration to his course.

He reached the corner where he’d last spotted Charlie, only to see the man vanish a third time, into what looked like the opening to an alley. Sherlock Holmes practically bellowed with rage, and went towards it at a speed that would have impressed an Olympic runner.

He skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley. Once again, it was a dead end one. Inspector Rooker was standing almost at the far end of it, facing a blank wall. He’d stopped moving altogether, and did not glance back when Holmes turned up.

He was standing very rigidly at first. But as Holmes watched, his entire frame went slack. His shoulders slumped. The bag dropped from his grasp.

The man stumbled away and tried to support himself against the wall off to his right-hand side, his whole aspect unsteady.

There was now another person standing on the spot that he had occupied. A figure caught in lightless silhouette as well, but nothing like Rooker’s. This outline was slightly taller, very thin and gaunt. Holmes became stock still with apprehension.

The figure seemed to notice he was there. It peered over its shoulder at him. There was a streetlight on the pavement beside Holmes, and he ought to have been able to catch a glimpse of this weird perpetrator’s face. But there was only blackness. No kind of real features could be made out in the least. It was like looking at a living shadow.

Why, then, was he certain it was smiling? Sherlock Holmes was not sure, but a loathsome tingling sensation ran the whole way down his spine.

The figure calmly reached down and picked up the bag of loot … and what ghost could do that?

And then the shadows on the wall in front of it appeared to coalesce. They seemed to form a portal.

The figure stepped towards it. Paused a moment, glancing back at Holmes again and raising a hand in a mocking gesture of farewell.

And, next instant, it was gone. The shadows unfolded. There was only the blank brickwork.

Charlie Rooker groaned, put his back against the wall, and then slid partway down it till his chest was almost at a level with his knees. He looked like he had been awoken from an awful nightmare, his brow soaked with sweat and his smooth features contorted in a grim, agonised fashion.

“Oh my God, I could hear laughter,” he gasped. “That damned poltergeist thing got to me, now didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” Holmes answered, crouching down beside him.

Charlie Rooker closed his eyes and pressed both hands across his face.

“I robbed the people in that house?”

“It wasn’t really you, Inspector.”

“But who’ll believe me? I’m an officer of the law, Mr Holmes. Do you have any idea what’ll happen to me?”

Holmes patted his upper arm reassuringly.

“I shall speak to the Home Secretary first thing tomorrow morning, Charlie. And to the Prime Minister himself, if necessary. I’ll explain the situation to them, and demand they grant both you and all the others a full pardon. This country owes me far too much to even think of denying me that.”

Rooker nodded gratefully, his features untensing a little.

“But what was that thing?” he demanded.

Holmes abruptly stood back up.

“Not ‘what’ but ‘who.’ I believe I got to the nub of it earlier today, Inspector. ‘What possible use would a poltergeist have for cash and valuables?’ Remember me saying that?”

The man below him nodded.

“The creature that possessed you was a kind of phantom, so the answer to that question must be ‘absolutely none’. But don’t you see it? Crime committed not for gain, but merely for crime’s own sake. Fear and suffering imposed for no real reason. Harmless, innocent people framed for deeds that they were in no way responsible for. A whole city thrown into turmoil. All of this speaks of a penetrating intellect, yes, and yet a cruel and very devious one, which delights in the harm it causes. The work of an individual – in other words – who has pure, unfettered evil wired in his brain and running through his very blood.”

Rooker was still staring at the great detective with sheer incomprehension. But Holmes raised himself to his full height.

“When I went down the Reichenbach Falls, I returned to life as a human being. But I was not the only man who took that fatal plunge. And the other one, or so it seems, has come back into this world in a different form entirely.”

Holmes turned to face the wall where the true criminal had disappeared. His eyes blazed, and his fists were clenched so tightly they went white around the knuckles.

“You may have evaded me this time,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “But mark my word, sooner or later I shall hunt you down and put an end to you. You have my solemn promise on that score, Professor James Moriarty.”

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About the author

Tony Richards was born in 1956 in Greenford, England, and educated at University College School, Hampstead, before going on to study law at Middlesex University.

Although he has written science fiction, mystery and even mainstream stories, he is principally an author of supernatural, dark fantasy and horror fiction. He has published twelve full-length novels, five novellas, and more than ninety short stories.

His debut novel The Harvest Bride made the shortlist for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, and his third collection, Going Back (there have been eight published so far) was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award.

© Tony Richards 2018

Tony Richards has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 2013 by Tony Richards

This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media

Content

THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 21st CENTURY
Tony Richards

THE HOUSE OF BLOOD

THE DESERT KING

THE HIDDEN SHORE

THE TERROR IN THE PARK

THE VANISHED

SHINY TRINKETS

A SHADOW IN THE HARBOUR

THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED

VERMILLION MOON

A GHOST IN TOKYO

FLIGHT OF FANTASY

ABOVE THE BOULEVARDS

THE CRIMEWAVE

About the author