Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(15)

When she sweeps through the door, the guard looks up. “Who’re you?”

“Cleaner.” She gestures at her CLEAN-TEQ shirt.

His glasses shine. And his polyester company blazer. And his suspicion. He purses his lips. “You’re late. They’re on the third floor.”

She hustles to the lift. The guard says, “Three, mind. Don’t let me catch you sniffing around the floor where that bird jumped.”

Shaz nods with a servile expression. Servile, word of the day. “Yessir.” She steps into the lift and pushes Three. When the doors open again, she dashes to the stairs and climbs to the top of the building.

She catches her breath in the echoing stairwell. The door to the roof is dead ahead. Locked. Just like Harry, and the cops, said it would be. Brand-new keypad.

She presses a few keys. The display flashes. Seek assistance.

The building’s security upgrade hasn’t been activated. Holly couldn’t have entered a passcode to unlock this door, since there is no passcode—not yet. The door’s locked. Period.

Except that can’t be right. She scrutinizes the keypad. Runs her fingers along its edges. Rises on tiptoe.

Yes. At the top nestled where the keypad screws into the wall is a thin slot for a keycard. A master key. Or a maid’s key.

From her pocket she takes the keycard she palmed from Croft’s desk earlier. She inserts it. The lock flips.

She pushes the door open and steps outside. The wind hits her in the face.

She props the door open. The roof is a jumble of pipes and ventilation units. Why would Holly come up here, except to jump?

Because she was lured here, to meet somebody. Somebody who betrayed her.

Holly hadn’t stolen from the bank. She’d uncovered the breach. She discovered that an intruder had compromised MCB’s computer system, and she wanted to expose it. She was killed before she could reveal the truth.

She came up here in secret to meet the person she thought she could confide in.

Not MCB’s Managing Director, Amelia Gordon-Lennox. Not her boyfriend, Nic Ramsey. She may have suspected him, or may have wanted to protect him.

Holly came up here on her own, and she opened the door. How?

Shaz thinks: There’s a master keycard. There’s probably a master code for the keypad too. A code somebody gave Holly.

The cops haven’t found a master code, though. And they haven’t found the device that would logically contain one—Holly’s phone.

Carefully, Shaz walks the roof. The killer could have taken the phone from Holly and got rid of it, but . . . she stops.

Near the edge of the roof is a rain gutter, and a drainage grate. Shaz crouches down. Under the grate is a mobile.

She pulls on rubber gloves and pries up the grate. When she presses a button, the phone lights up. A message is on the home screen.





4321#


The master code. She lets out a breath.

The voice comes from behind her. “I’ll take that from you now.”

She’s a foot from the edge. She grits her teeth to keep her voice steady. “If you throw me off the roof, you can’t make it look like a second suicide. Not this soon, Fallon.”

She rises. Fallon kicks the door shut.

All his jolly enthusiasm is gone. His eyes are flat. “Don’t be daft. Hand over the phone.”

Don’t cry. Don’t beg. Don’t let him see your hands shake. She stuffs the phone in her front pocket. “Throw me off and it goes with me. You’d have to retrieve it from the street, in full view.”

“Of whom? The guard in the lobby? Who do you think alerted me?”

“You’re the one who breached the bank,” she says. “But Holly only figured that out once you lured her up here to meet you.”

“Brava, my little urchin. Now come with me.”

“She didn’t know who to blow the whistle to. She worried the breach was an inside job, and she was afraid to go to the police. Why? Because the thief used her login credentials?”

“I said, come with me. Or it won’t be you who suffers. It’ll be Harry.”

A chill washes through her. Fallon’s phone rings.

He smiles thinly. “As I was saying.” He answers with a curt, “Hold on.”

Shaz frantically scans the rooftop. Looking for weapons, at the locked door, at various pieces of security kit half-installed. All of it labeled Croft Security. Like the door lock. Like the guard’s company blazer.

Play for time. “Yeah, Holly’s login accessed the data, pointing the blame at her. So she called the person she thought could help her handle the nightmare of going public. You.”

“You’re a right little genius. Come with me or Harry will pay.” He raises his phone. “Put Harry on.”

Shaz’s back tingles. The edge is so, so close behind her.

Phone to his ear, Fallon steps towards her. Stops. “What do you mean, gone?”

Shaz’s pulse pounds as she says, “Harry. And his family. They’re gone.”

He glances at her sharply. She thinks: Thank God. Her warning to Harry’s mum took hold. “Get out of central London. Leave now.”

She says, “When you live in a trailer, you can turn it into a safe house as easy as hitching it to your car and driving off.”

Fallon’s voice roughens. “You’ll never prove it. So you need to come with me and—”