A Game of Orange Hints - A Sanders Sides AU

Five

Detective Inspector Remy Lestrade is sitting in his bleakly modern office inside the London police department. The room is filled with strip lights and wilting pot plants. Remy is at his desk, with a pair of silver sunglasses pushed back into his hair and flipping through the contents of a manila folder. A case file. He's also gripping a to-go cup, which contains what's about to be his fourth cappuccino of the day. He doesn't even glance up at the sound of his door opening, knowing full well who it will be.

"You only like the funny ones, don't you, hun?" Remy says.

"Obviously," says the voice of consulting detective Logan Holmes.

"Well then, you're going to love this." He spins the file that he's reading around so that it's facing Logan, who is taking a seat in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. Virgil sits down beside him quietly, and Remy pays it no mind. After last time, he's used to seeing Virgil accompany Logan to their consultations. "It's about that explosion."

"Gas leak, yes?" Logan asks, reaching for the file.

Remy shakes his head. "Made to look like one. Explosives." He takes a sip of his coffee.

Now Logan's interested. He begins flipping through the documents. Pictures of the damage, write up of the forensic findings.

"Basically nothing left of the place," Remy continues. "Except for a strong box. A very strong box. We found this inside it."

Then, he's sliding an envelope across the desk towards Logan. It's good quality. Cream-coloured. On it, there's a line of spidery writing. It's addressed to someone. By hand.

For Logan Holmes.

Logan looks up, surprised. "You haven't opened it?"

Again, Remy shakes his head. "It's addressed to you, isn't it? We did X-Ray it though. Not booby trapped."

"How reassuring," says Logan blankly. The detective puts down the case file, exchanging it for the envelope. He turns it over in his hands, inspecting it closely. "It's nice stationary. Bohemian."

"I'm sorry, what?" Remy asks. He's too tired for this.

"From the Czech Republic," Logan clarifies. "No fingerprints?"

"Nope."

Logan runs his finger over the writing. Over his name. "She used a fountain pen," he notes. He looks at the residue that it leaves on his finger, rubbing his thumb against it slowly. "Parker Duofold. Iridium nib."

"She?" Virgil asks, piping up for the first time since their arrival.

"Obviously," Logan says.

"Oh, obviously." Virgil runs a hand down his face. "My bad."

Remy snorts.

Carefully, Logan opens the envelope, not paying Virgil or the DI any mind. He turns it upside down over the desk, emptying out its contents. From inside tumbles... a cell phone. But it's not just any old phone. This one is small, expensive, and cased in scarlet red.

Virgil knows it right away. "But that's– that's the phone, the red phone..."

"What, from 'A Study in Scarlet?'" Remy asks.

"It's not the actual phone, of course. But it's definitely supposed to look like it–" Logan breaks off, realizing what the DI just said. "Wait, 'A Study in Scarlet'– you read his blog?" He asks, pointing at Virgil.

Remy looks amused. "Of course I read his blog, babes, we all do. Do you really not know that the earth goes around the sun?"

A snicker of laughter can be heard from the hallway. Logan whips around, just in time to see Sergeant Roman Anderson passing past the open door of the office on his way to Evidence, with a stack of folders in hand, not even pretending that he hasn't been listening.

Moving swiftly on, Logan runs a hand through his hair and turns back to the inspector. "Anyways, it's not the same phone. This one is brand new. But someone's gone through a lot of trouble to make it look like it's the same phone as Jennifer Wilson's, which suggests that your little blog–" He fires a glare at Virgil. "–has a wider readership than you think." Logan turns on the phone, to find that it isn't password protected. He unlocks it, and notices a red notification circle hovering in the corner of the phone application. He opens it, clicking into the voicemail box. Once on speaker phone, Logan sets the phone down on the desk.

"You have one new message," the computerized phone voice says before the message begins to play:

"Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep."

Then, the message ends, and the phone is quiet.

After a moment of silence, Virgil speaks up. "That's it?"

But, Logan is closing in on the phone. A photo is downloading. It must have been pre-programmed to download once the message had been triggered. What kind of phone is this? "No, that's not it."

He opens the photo. It's a picture of the inside of a bare, empty flat.

Remy takes the phone, staring at the picture. "What the hell are we supposed to make of this? Some pips on a phone message and an estate agent's photo?"

Logan frowns, shaking his head. "It's a warning," he says, gravely.

"A warning?" Virgil asks.

Logan grabs the phone back from Remy as he begins to realize. He stares at it. "Some secret societies used to send dried melon seeds, orange pips, things like that, in order to communicate what was going to happen. There were five pips on that voice message. They're warning us that it's going to happen again." He looks at the photograph closely. "I've seen this place before. We should go there immediately." He shoves the phone in his pocket and stands, his chair scraping against the floor. "Come on, Virgil."

"Hang on," Virgil says, although he's standing up anyways, tailing Logan on impulse. "What exactly is going to happen again?"

Logan makes an exploding firework motion with his hands. "Boom."