Sophia Holmes and the Blind Banker (Sherlock's Daughter Fanfic) *Completed*

Chapter Seven

"Hey, beautiful, d'wanna come back with me?" one of the boys call to me. He has a hardened face and looks older than the others here. "I've got something you might wanna try." I ignore him, my bones tingling as I plan my moves if he was to touch me.

"Push off, Lee!" Raz calls to the boy. "She's with me." Lee falls to the authority of Raz, and leaves the park, pushing the girl to the side in his fury. I relax, and start to examine the walls. "You can't stay long," Raz mutters to me. "He'll come back." I look behind me to the spot where he vanished.

"I'll be ready," I tell him, turning back to the wall.

We search for about five minutes without finding anything, then Raz gives out a cry. "Here, look."

I move over to where he stands and take a step back. Paint dots the wall, forming another symbol, but not a number. I recognise the word as a type of simplified Chinese, but it takes me a minute before it clicks.

"This is the same paint?" I ask Raz as he runs a finger along the wall.

"Yeah, and it's still wet." He looks around. "They're obviously still here. What does it mean?"

"It's '死亡' - means death." I follow Raz' gaze over to the exit, the way dad and John went, my mind pulling pieces together to form a story. I'm panicking; I need to calm down. I envision a shadow - symbolising my fear - being wrapped up in chains and being thrown into the back of my mind, let to bubble over somewhere it won't hurt. "The boy who left just now, Lee, how long has he been coming here?"

"Er," he shrugs, thinking. "I dunno, just moved. Came over from Hong Kong a couple of months back." I pocket my phone and run towards the exit, dodging the bikes as I dart through the ramps. "Soph, where you going?"

I turn my coat collar up as I reach the pathway along the side of the river, hopping over a few fences and dropping over a brick wall to land on the sides of the train tracks. I flip a torch from out of my pocket and shine it along the rails, following the indents in the gravel that dad and John made on their way. My phone buzzes a text alert in my pocket and I take it out, examining the sender. John.

'Join us down on the tracks. I think I've found something.'

I start tracing his phone, and it leads me in the opposite direction. My foot collides with a can and I bend down, holding the torch in my mouth as I turn it over in my hand. Michigan, yellow. I sniff it quickly and find the fumes still fresh on the nozzle. Footsteps crunch behind me as I stand back up, and I spin around, my torch now threateningly positioned in my hand.

"Woah," John says, putting his hands up in surrender. "It's only me."

"John!" I say, relaxing. "Where's Sherlock?"

"I was going to ask you the same question," he frowns. "Hasn't he texted you?"

I shrug. "No, the only text I got was from you..." I trail off, the panic struggling against its chains. "Oh, God!"

I start running, hoping that I'm wrong. I hear the dialling tone of John's phone behind me and feel comforted that he's nearby. Dad isn't answering his phone: on the one hand, it's not out of the ordinary for him not to answer, but it also worries me. If John has found some fresh evidence, then it means that Lee is still out here.

A large rail freight comes into view, and I see dad examining it beside the container. The worry flushes through me, and I slow down to a trot.

"Answer your phone!" John calls to him. "I've been calling you! I've found it."

We turn around and back in the direction we came, my coat billowing out behind me as I run.

"What did you find?" dad asks as we go.

"Death," I tell him, showing him the picture I took. "I thought originally that it was for you or for John, but now I think it's for Soo Lin. She's going to die tonight."

"There, look," John calls back to us as we slow down near a large wall. "This is it." He leads us over to it so that we're standing in front as his mouth drops open in surprise.

"John..." I say, cautious that John may have been hallucinating.

"It's been painted over!" John insists. Dad and I shine our torches over the wall as John continues to stare at the wall in disbelief. "I don't understand. It-it was here..." He stumbles backwards, "... ten minutes ago. I saw it. A whole load of graffiti!"

I walk over to the wall, running a finger along the brickwork and examining the paint that stains my flesh. "Still wet," I say, spinning around and looking for the perpetrator.

"Somebody doesn't want me to see it." Dad turns around and grabs the sides of John's head in both hands.

"Hey, Sherlock," John protests, "what are you doing ...?"

"Shh, John, concentrate," dad orders him. "I need you to concentrate. Close your eyes."

"No, what? Why? Why? What are you doing?!" Dad starts to lead him around in a small circle, trying to stimulate John's visual memory so that he can recall the symbols. They will be inside, somewhere, but they'll be buried deep within the rubbish that ordinary people keep in their brains.

"I need you to maximise your visual memory," dad tells him as I try to rub the paint away to little effect. "Try to picture what you saw. Can you picture it?"

"Yeah," John lies.

"Can you remember it?"

"Yes, definitely."

"Can you remember the pattern?"

"Yes!" John insists, but I'm sceptical. It's unlikely that he's remembered much at all.

"How much can you remember?"

"Well, don't worry ..." John begins.

"Because the average human memory on visual matters is only sixty-two percent accurate."

"Yeah, well, don't worry – I remember all of it." I frown in disbelief at him.

"Really?" dad asks, with just as much scepticism.

"Yeah, well at least I would ..." he says, pulling himself free from dad's grip, "if I can get to my pockets!" He reaches for his jacket pocket and pulls out his phone. "I took a photograph." He hands the phone to dad and shows us the picture, the flash illuminating the wall so that we can see the symbols clearly.

"Perfect!" I say as dad looks away in embarrassment. "Brilliant!" I spin around, one thing nagging at the corners of my mind.

Why did Lee paint over the wall if he'd seen John take the picture?