Find Me (BBC Sherlock Fan Fiction)

Chapter 5

'Yes,' snapped Sherlock, still fiddling with tea bags and hot water. 'And I hope she won't reply.'

John's smirk warmed into a smile. 'Or at least, you hope she won't reply while I'm standing here watching you. I'm going to pick up Rosie now. I'll knock when I get back, shall I? Just in case you're busy.'

Sherlock grimaced into his tea. This was all John's fault. He'd been quite happy not texting, or at least reading her messages and composing responses in his head without actually sending them. Once a month or so he'd have another attempt at opening the puzzle box but mostly he preferred to keep her locked inside his memory where she stood, resplendent in her nakedness, running a finger down his cheek as she had that last time in Karachi. She was always naked. He hadn't questioned his subconscious too closely as to why.

As soon as the door shut Sherlock took out his phone again, replaced it on the kitchen side in a direct line of sight and proceeded to carry it around with him from task to task for the rest of the day. An urgent new case might come in. An interesting development might arise in an existing one. It was important that he was contactable at all times.

But the text didn't come until two o'clock the following morning, and when it did arrive it was a fish. An extreme close-up of a fish, with a bulbous, glassy eye and a bit of greyish scale visible on a green background. He abandoned the half-finished experiment on the preservative properties of natron and swapped the kitchen table for a laptop and a lesson in aquatic classification.

Eventually he concluded the fish was a common species found across much of the South China Sea but it was lying on daun pandan leaves in a pattern most commonly produced by the Terengganu Malay, which placed her on the other side of the world. There was no special message encoded in the name of the fish or spelt out in the leaves and in the end he had to conclude it was simply a picture of a fish.

He put the phone aside, watched the dawn rise over West London battling a faint sense of disappointment. By the time John arrived late the next morning with his exaggerated knocking and expectant expression Sherlock would have taken any case whatsoever just for the distraction.

'Any more on the dancing men?' he asked brightly, before John could start asking the questions so clearly on the tip of his tongue.

'Er, yes. I had a message from Mr Cubitt this morning, he's going to call us later.' He took a breath. 'Why is there a mummified ferret on the kitchen table?'

When the call came John routed it though the laptop screen to get a better view.

'Dr Watson, I've had another message,' Cubitt started without preamble. Even via the medium of Skype it was obvious how agitated he was, his face flushed and sweating and much too close to the screen. 'And this one was here -' The computer swivelled round to show an indoor swimming pool, faced with granite and dark shiny tiles and housed in a modern, steel framed extension which looked like it had already won prizes for architectural design. 'Right inside the hotel on the wall above the pool. Look.'

The screen was initially too close to show more than a solitary foot of one of the men but as Cubitt walked backwards the scale of the message became apparent. Someone had defaced an entire wall of the pool with a troupe of dancing men, several feet high and daubed in white paint. There were splatter marks on the floor below. Sherlock jotted down the message, turned away to find his record of the others and began working without further comment.

'What does it say, Mr Holmes? Dr Watson? What does it say?'

'I don't know Henry,' John replied. 'But we're working on it.'