Find Me (BBC Sherlock Fan Fiction)

Chapter 9

Some time later Sherlock stood in front of the large expanse of granite that covered the swimming pool wall, which was completely blank.

'Didn't you make a record of it? A photo? Anything?' exclaimed Detective Martin incredulously.

'I wrote it down but I was in London at the time, where the paper is now. If you need proof, there's another message on a website somewhere - John can tell you. And someone must have washed the paint off this wall, ask the cleaning staff.'

'TripAdvisor,' said John, scrolling through his phone. 'There was another message on TripAdvisor, but it's not there now. Mr Cubitt showed us an email, but I don't have a record of that either.'

'So there's no evidence that anyone was stalking Mrs Cubitt at all, as you claim. No sign that this Abe Slaney was anywhere near here. Well Mr Holmes, let me explain how a proper detective works, because I think you've been playing too much Cluedo. Here in Norfolk we need proof, we don't just go around arresting people on the word of a man who think he's Agatha Christie. Mr Cubitt shot her husband and fled. She's my prime suspect. '

'Then how do you explain the footprints in the flowerbed?'

'What are you talking about? There is no flowerbed. The room where Mr Cubitt was shot has patio doors which lead out onto the terrace. No one's been standing around in the garden.'

'You're not looking in the right flowerbeds then. Let me show you.'

'If you're wrong, I'm going to lock you up for wasting police time.'

'Let's start by the garage, Henry Cubitt had mud on his boots when he came to see us – we can track Abraham Slaney from there.'

'Are you making this up as you go along?' whispered John out of the corner of his mouth as they headed round the corner of the hotel in the direction of the converted barn that served as a garage.

Sherlock gave him a look. 'Here – Henry Cubitt, size twelve feet, boots, limited tread. Abe Slaney, size ten, wearing boots with a defined sole. See where he's walked across the gravel?' Sherlock followed the trail to the nearest patch of grass, pointing out the tread stamped into the earth. 'He's been watching Mrs Cubitt for days presumably, hiding in the garage, the woods, lurking around at night and,' he pointed triumphantly. 'Standing in the flowerbeds. And then if we follow him round to the terrace.' Sherlock rounded the corner of the hotel, strode past rattan patio furniture and abandoned cigarette ends. 'We find him here, outside the patio doors, early this morning, where Elsie Cubitt had arranged to meet him.'

'She met him?' John queried. 'Why would she do that if he was stalking her?'

'Because her husband told us she wanted Henry to ignore Abe Slaney and he'd go away. I think she was planning to pay him off. Were the windows open or closed when you found the body?'

'Closed. But there's no body, he's not dead,' Detective Martin clarified.

Sherlock pulled open the patio doors, ignoring the squeak of protest from the police officer and examined the frame for a while, then the carpet, and then moved into the room, pushing uniformed staff out of the way automatically. He straightened, considering. 'Do elderly women generally wear high heeled shoes?'

'Arrest this man,' Detective Martin ordered.

'Early this morning Elsie Cubitt opened this door to Abe Slaney, here are the marks of her heels on the carpet, which is deep enough to have kept the impression. She opened the doors to let him in - this candle by the door has gone out in the draft but the rest are still burning. Candles make a hotel boutique, don't you think? Slaney stood here, there's mud from his shoes. They spoke and then Mr Cubitt came in unexpectedly – he was found in his dressing gown, he'd been woken from bed - but he'd brought his gun with him and he fired at Slaney. He missed, hitting the door frame – see the hole? There was a struggle, much of this furniture has been moved, look at the marks on the carpet, and in the struggle, the gun went off, killing Mr Cubitt outright.'

'He isn't dead.'

Sherlock waved a hand. 'Irrelevant. Mr Slaney doesn't want money, what he wants is Elsie, or he wouldn't have followed her from America, so now he has what he wants. Her husband is dead and he has a gun and he knows that the CCTV isn't working because he disabled it himself, it's easily done. So he and Elsie just walk out of the hotel.'

'And the elderly woman in high heels?' asked John.

'Is the only bit that doesn't belong. Over here, look.' He gestured towards a chair near the fireplace, separated from the patio doors by a swathe of rug. 'Someone was sitting in this chair, I see two stiletto heel marks in the carpet and the half empty cup of tea is also a bit of a giveaway. She must have been here at the same time as Mr and Mrs Cubitt or the hotel staff would have moved the cup. There are no other heel marks in the rest of the room, so whoever she was, she sat and drank while Mr Cubitt was murdered.'

'He's out of surgery, by the way.'

'And she's elderly because she couldn't get up and stop Slaney kidnapping Elsie or because she drinks tea?'

Sherlock picked up the cup. 'There was a woman's signature in the reception guest book, it looked like an elderly hand but she wasn't in the dining room with us earlier.' He replaced it in the saucer. 'Lipstick. Whoever she is she needs to disguise her identity, she's not concerned by violence and she's with Mrs Cubitt right now, which probably means Elsie's in considerably less danger than she might otherwise have been.'

'So where are they now?' chipped in Detective Martin, interrupting the logical chain of deductive reasoning Sherlock was about to put together to answer that very question.

He opted for sarcasm instead. 'I don't know – but if you were Abe Slaney, if you were in love with a woman you hadn't seen for some time who'd been living on the other side of the world and if you'd finally found her after months of searching, what would you do?'

'No,' said John quietly. 'What would you do?'

Sherlock's mouth answered before his mind had properly processed the unconscious thought. 'Are there any other hotels in the area?' he asked the detective.

John had that awful smug smirk on his face again. 'And is that what you did before? In Karachi?'

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, still attempting to identify where his answer had come from. It was an emotional leap of the kind he usually didn't, or couldn't make, or at least not without some thought and a strong cup of tea, but he recognised the truth of it on a deeper level. He was disturbed to find that he still had a deeper level. 'There aren't any boutique hotels in Karachi.'

'There aren't many in Norfolk,' Detective Martin steered the conversation back to more familiar territory. 'The nearest one is Elridge's, a couple of miles away. But Slaney could be staying anywhere – there are hundreds of bed and breakfasts, rented rooms, holiday lets, why wouldn't he be in one of those?'

Sherlock knew what the right answer was and there was a brief silence as the urge to show off fought the instinct for privacy. 'Because he's in love with her. He hasn't seen her in some time. He won't want to get it wrong.'

He ignored John's sudden grin, focused on what the policeman was saying.

'But Slaney threatened her – you said he wrote 'prepare to meet your God' on the wall of her swimming pool.'

Sherlock frowned. 'He's been sending her messages, people don't always express themselves very well when they're in love, or so I'm told.'

John quoted, ''He won't want to get it wrong?' By 'getting it wrong' you mean he won't want to stay in a hotel she won't like, or he'll take her out for dinner and end up in a Harvester by mistake.'

'I doubt he even knows what a Harvester is,' Sherlock replied, sullenly.

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