221B

Chapter 8 - The Blind Banker

At the National Antiquities Museum, Sherlock paces around a display area as he interviews Andy.

"When was the last time you saw her?" Sherlock asks him.

"Three days ago, um, here at the museum." Andy answers.

Sherlock briefly focuses on a glass case shwoing some clay teapots. I notice that most of them are dull, but one is shiny.

"This morning they told me she'd resigned just like that." Andy continues.

Sherlock looks at another case that has some jade figurines, then at a piece of artwork.

"Just left her work unfinished." Andy finishes.

"What was the last thing she did on her final afternoon?" Sherlock asks, turning to Andy.

Andy leads us down to the basement archive, turning on the lights as he leads us in.

"She does this demonstration for the tourists-a-a tea cermemony. So she would have packed up her things and just put them in here." Andy says.

He leads us to an open stack and starts turning a handle at the end to widen the gap. John and I go to stand behind him to look into the stack, I look up and see that Sherlock has noticed something more interesting in the shadows further along in the room. Sherlock walks closer to it, and I follow Sherlock. I look back at John who gives Sherlock a questioning look, he looks at me and I shrug my shoulders.

As Sherlock and I walk closer we see that it's a life-sized sculpture of a nude woman on a stand. Yellow paint has been spray painted across the front of it-a nearly horizontal line across the eyes, and an upside down eight on the body, the horizontal line above it. Andy and John turn to see what Sherlock's found.

It's night outside the museum as Sherlock, John, and I walk out of it.

"We have to get to Soo Lin Yao." Sherlock says.

"If she's still alive." I point out.

"Sherlock!" We hear a familiar voice. We turn and see it's Raz, who's running over to join us.

"Oh, look who it is." John says with no enthusiasm.

"Found something you'll like." Raz says to Sherlock, then walks off. Sherlock immediately follows, and I follow Sherlock. John follows, a little slower than usual.

Shortly afterwards, the four of us walk across Hungerford Bridge, heading towards the south side of the river.

"Tuesday morning," John says. "All you've gotta do is turn up and say the bag was yours."

"Forget about your court date." Sherlock says to him.

At South Bank State Park, Raz leads us across the under-croft.

"If you want to hide a tree, then a forest is the best place to do it, wouldn't you say?" Sherlock says. "People would just walk straight past, not knowing, unable to decipher the message."

Raz points to a certain area on the heavily-graffitied walls. "There. I spotted it earlier."

Among all the other paint, we see slashes of yellow paint forming Chinese symbols. Some of them have already been partially painted over by other artist's tags and pictures.

"They have been here." Sherlock says, then turns to Raz. "Is that the exact same paint?"

"Yeah."