Water's Edge

Chapter XL

Sherlock & Moriarty

I sped back to Thorngumbald and was happy not to get spotted, the borders the only times I checked for flashing blue lights. I got back in record time, and screeched into Gordon's carpark. He was already there to meet me.

"You have a leak." I said, pushing open my door, leaving it open as I checked my phone, my bank account, changing into a new shirt.

"I saw. Thanks though. Want me to fix it whilst ya here?"

"Sure." I said, "What day is it?"

"Wednesday."

"Fucking fantastic." I felt alive, an actual lead, and panicked at how I would bring all of this together. I needed a clear enemy, not just the amorphous tribe of pro-dam.

"You seem in a good mood, solved the case?" Gordon said.

"Something like that." I got back in the Zee and sparked back off into town.

I texted Viv and she said she'd meet me at The Queen Victoria. I wanted to get my facts straight, see if there was anything I could connect the dots too. I hoped Yazmin might also join, but I felt abandoned on all sides. How would I find the evidence if no one was looking, if I couldn't gain access? How would I prove this was more than just hippies and their beliefs?

When I began to pull up outside The Queen Victoria, I had to pause for thought, everything vanishing. A man with a mass of curled black hair, offering the V to the occupants, had been thrown outside. He dived into a car I knew, more than knew, recognised. A Broadspeed Jaguar XJ in a hideous black and purple paintjob. I knew that car. I was sure of it.

"Stephen?"

I pulled up quickly but the Jag had sped away. I just sat there, outside the pub, watching it vanish over the horizon. Stephen Macdaniels. It couldn't have been? Why was he out here?

"Oi!" Came a voice and a knock on the window. It was Viv, "You getting me a drink or what?"

She asked what had distracted me when I got inside, and I tried to explain with cliff notes, ordering a half Stella and a white wine from the exhausted looking student behind the bar. Stephen Macdaniels had crossed my path a few time, a proudly self-nominated Bow Street Runner; I distrusted him, even loathed him, a man who used the good name of investigation to do whatever he wanted.

"Well, he came in here telling people to fuck off if he found them unattractive. Boys and girls." That was definitely Macdaniels, "Asked if he had done the right thing sending his friend along, and then left."

"Sounds suitably mad to be Stephen."

"You sound like you really do know him."

"Am I permitted to be a bit dramatic?" I asked, embarrassed. I was being serious. I needed to be.

Viv laughed, "Oh my god, yes. You're such a sourpuss."

"If I'm Sherlock, he's my Moriarty."

"Oh my god." She teased, sipping her wine, "I'll get these, you need to sit down."

I didn't let her and bought the round, found us a table. I couldn't let the phantom Stephen Macdaniels distract me, "What do you need?"

"Can you get Yazmin here?"

"DCI Womack? Not really. Why?"

"It's definitely not the environmentalists."

"What makes you say that?"

I got her up to speed, how Wren and their crew wouldn't have even known about Berg to add him to the throngs, that someone had to be able to get to Winthrop directly without cause. Someone would have noticed a load of hippies dragging the old racist into the river, "Not just an adorable philanthropist then." She teased, seemed to be her permanent setting.

"What do you expect of an old mayor of a new town." I shrugged and sipped my drink, lighting up. Thank the lord for one Tory law: smoking inside.

"But you can't tie it to anyone, because—" Viv was putting all the dots together, "Yazmin won't give you anything, Elle has her 'round her little finger now."

"How much trouble was there when I left?"

"A lot. I even got a bollocking." Viv shook her head, "I get why. I can't really complain."

"They were afraid I'd go sniffing around all the wrong places. I didn't even want to. But I am now." I sighed, "I won't lie, I've not done anything like this in a while. Detective work, it's like putting on a pair of old shoes. You know they are yours but they don't quite fit anymore."

Viv just let me talk and bought me a pint of Stella. I let her. I enjoyed her company. I felt an imposter in my own skin since starting work again, after such a long sabbatical looking after Dad. I wasn't working as I used to do. I was cutting corners, missing obvious methods of detecting the crime. The quiet drink made me feel a bit more human again, and I got through a whole pack of Marlboro Lights without realising. I slept for the first time all the way through the dark, bleak night.