Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(59)

“Won’t your friend need the flash drive?”

“I’ll see if he can set it up just with the copy.”

“Good. Then get on with it. When you’re finished, Sarah and I will go back to the hotel and wait for them to contact us. Thank you, Pe . . . Watson.”

Peter gave him a wry look, but he said nothing more. He went to the telephone and spent a quarter of an hour speaking very quietly to someone he apparently knew well.

Meanwhile Marcus carefully put most of the stuffing back inside Raffa. One thing he had thought to do was save the thread with which he was originally stitched, or more accurately, with which the person had stitched him after the flash drive had been placed inside him. It was very close indeed to the original. Would they look closely enough to notice any difference? It was a linen thread, very strong. They might find which seam had been undone. He should unpick another seam, perhaps a long one, like his neck or leg, and use that to re-stitch the one they would look at.

He explained to Sarah what he was doing, and why, and she nodded again. Raffa was a stuffed toy, and yet he felt almost as if he were poking the needle into a live creature. He did it very carefully, mimicking exactly the depth and distance of the stitches already there.

“You won’t hurt him,” Sarah said gently. “He doesn’t feel, you know.” It was difficult for her to say. To her, Raffa was real.

“I know,” he answered her, raising his eyes from the stitching for a moment. “But I want it to be exactly like the seam they made, so they won’t see the difference.”

“Is that why you used the same thread? What about his neck? It will be different.”

“I’m hoping they won’t look at that so closely, at least to begin with. Later, they will know, because if they don’t give your mother back, we will delete . . . rub out . . . part of their flash drive every time they refuse. We just don’t want them to know that straight away.”

Peter’s computer finished the copying, and he took out the tiny slip of plastic and handed it to Marcus, who worked the little thing deep into Raffa’s insides. When the giraffe was sewn up again, and he looked exactly as he had before, Marcus said goodbye to Peter.

“You need to take the copy to your friend in . . . wherever he is . . . and let me know if it’s gone according to plan.” Marcus did not add any more. He wanted Sarah to believe it was all planned for, and safe—that Sherlock Holmes would never fail. It was Marcus St. Giles who needed Peter Cauliffe to know where he was, and have a backup, just in case.

Also it would be better if nothing appeared to have changed since the threat was made. Whoever it was who had taken Maria Waterman knew perfectly well that he was merely an actor who happened to have played the role of Holmes rather well, or at any rate, rather successfully—from somebody else’s script.

“We will go into the dining room and have afternoon tea,” he said as they walked through the foyer.

“I don’t want tea,” she replied.

“Neither do I,” he agreed. “But we should have it, nevertheless. We need them to know that we are here, and ready to do business. And I would very much rather be where lots of people can see us. It is safer.”

“Oh,” she said in a very small voice. She grasped onto his sleeve again.

“Do you like chocolate cake?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you might. So do I. Not very good for you, but we need a treat, don’t you think?”

She nodded.

They found a table and sat Raffa, in the attaché case, on the chair between them. Marcus ordered tea, and two slices of chocolate cake, with icing. He could see that she was frightened. Honestly, he was frightened too. The price of failure in this was infinitely higher than anything he had imagined when he began.

They must talk about something. He could not let her just sit here in silence, trying to pretend she was not terrified, and imagining what might be happening to her mother, and what in the end she would do alone, in a country where she knew no one. The guilt she would feel for failing would destroy her.

What would the real Sherlock Holmes have talked about? Nothing. He did not deal with children, except the Baker Street Irregulars, and they were not well brought-up little girls. They were boys, and street-wise urchins at that.

“Do you like to read?” he asked.

She finished her mouthful of chocolate cake. “Of course I do.”

“What’s your favorite book?”

“Other than your stories?”

“Other than those, yes.”

“A book of poems by Edward Lear. It was my mummy’s when she was little. And my granny’s before that.”

For a moment he was totally lost, then a flash of memory came to his rescue.

“Ah, yes. Lots of limericks. Are there any drawings in your book?”

“Drawings?”

“Yes, of flowers and things.”

“No, there are rhymes and stories.” She looked puzzled.

He was struggling. He took a piece of paper out of his notebook and a pen, and he drew a picture of Lear’s as he remembered it. It was a mock botanical name—“nasty-creature-crawluppia.” He made the picture appropriately horrible, then passed it to her.

She took it, and giggled with pleasure. “I’ve never seen that before. I’d remember.”