An Age of Silver, 2/23
"An Age of Silver" (2/23)
Part 1
Notes: From here on out, there will be some liberties taken with police and medical procedures. Don't read further if that's going to bother you. Full Author's Notes are in Part 1.
Sherlock found himself staring at a wall of victims.
A row of photographs covered the far wall. Sherlock recognised Hopkins’ handiwork instantly, as the man was very much a visual thinker. He had pinned up the crime scene photographs of four dead women--cropped so that only their faces were visible--in order from first death to most recent murder. Hopkins had then scrawled the relevant details for each victim on note cards and placed them below each photograph.
The victims were all women. According to the note cards, their injuries were consistent with having been inflicted over a period of forty-eight hours, and they had been raped prior to being strangled and dumped.
And, also according to Hopkins’ note cards, they were all nameless.
“Hopkins,” Sherlock said after several long minutes, “this is a serial killer.”
“Yes,” Hopkins said wearily, “I know. Though the higher-ups would prefer that I called it a series of possibly-related murders spanning two years.”
Sherlock spent several seconds sifting through his memories of the past few weeks. Ever since John and Lestrade had moved away, it had been left up to him to scour the newspapers and various media outlets for potential cases. He wasn’t as thorough as John, as he simply didn’t have the patience for it-and hell, was it tedious-but something as big as this wasn’t likely to have slipped his notice.
“I didn’t hear about this,” he said finally. Hopkins nodded.
“You wouldn’t have. We haven’t put out an official press release yet, and the papers haven’t made the connection on their own. Or, if they have, they’re not giving it any coverage.” Hopkins’ words turned bitter. “The victims are all women that no one’s missed so far. The media isn’t going to waste too much time on them.”
They had brought the takeaway with them, but the food had been sitting untouched on the table for close to fifteen minutes now. It was well after noon at this point; the food was long since cold. But Sherlock had neglected to eat this morning, and even the unasked-for thrill of this new case wasn’t enough to distract him from the fact that he was beginning to feel lightheaded. Two decades ago, he could have worked a case for three days straight before feeling the effects of his refusal to eat.
Now, it was just one more thing he couldn’t do.
“All right,” Sherlock said, conceding to his body’s insistence and reaching for a container of food, “take me through it.”
Hopkins drew a breath.
The first victim had been murdered in January 2026. Her body had been found in Regent’s Park late in the month, and there had been signs of rape prior to her death. She had been strangled, had two-day-old bruises and scrapes on her arms, her nails had been torn and broken, and her corpse had been dumped naked. The only curious thing about her body was a streak of grey paint left behind on her hand, which had been noted but had not been deemed relevant to the case.
The second victim was murdered eight months later. Her body was found hidden behind a row of bins, and she’d been sporting two days’ worth of injuries, which supported Hopkins’ idea that the victims only lived for about forty-eight hours after their abductions. She had been discovered naked, her fingertips were bloody, and her corpse had borne signs of strangulation and rape. There was also a smudge of grey paint that covered her left palm.
A connection had not been made between the two corpses at the time because, until victim number three, there had been no connection to make. There had been no reason to believe that the two incidents were related.
But while two events are a coincidence, three incidents are a pattern.
In March of this year, the body of another unknown woman was discovered hidden in an alleyway. She had suffered the same injuries and treatment as the other two victims, and there was the same streak of grey paint on her hand.
“We’re lucky the same team handled the first and third victims. When the third victim was found, one of the sergeants remembered the paint from the first victim, and someone else thought to check for other crimes in London that had resulted in a victim being found with paint on their hands. Hence the discovery of the woman who became victim number two,” Hopkins said as he tapped the picture of the second victim. “Otherwise, we never would have made a connection between the three. It got handed over to our team once the higher-ups realised what we were dealing with.”
Hopkins’ exhaustion was evident this afternoon in his sandpaper-rough words. His voice itself was naturally deep, and his tone was always low whilst his words were usually just a shade above husky. In combination, it had the effect of adding a layer of gravity to even the most innocuous of topics. He never accommodated the clamour; whenever he spoke, all conversation around him ceased. He never had reason to raise his voice, so commanding was his tone. Even Sherlock couldn’t help but listen intently.
“And now there’s a fourth victim, six months after the third,” Sherlock said quietly as he pulled the picture of the unknown woman out of his breast pocket. It was an exact copy of the last one that hung on the wall. Peering at it now, he saw the grey paint on the victim’s palm that was consistent with all the others. He had noticed it earlier, but had not fully registered its presence until now. “That's a large gap between murders. It's entirely possible there are more victims out there that we're simply unaware of."
Hopkins nodded slowly.
"The thought has occurred," he said. "So far, our searches through the various databases have turned up nothing, and I don't have the resources to keep looking. We need to focus on the present until we have reason to start sifting through the past, or this will never get solved."
It was a fair point.
"So what conclusions can we draw?” Sherlock asked.
Hopkins leaned a hip against the long conference table and finally picked up his container of food. He speared a piece of beef on his fork and chewed contemplatively for a moment, staring at the wall of photographs.
“All of the victims are female,” he said. “All of them are unidentifiable, at least at the moment. The grey paint, we can probably safely say at this point, is deliberate. It is always found on their palms, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the right or left hand. Their bodies were all found dumped somewhere around the city. They were beaten and raped, and when we ran toxicology reports they all had trace amounts of Rohypnol in their systems. The amount of the drug that we found indicates that the original dosage wasn’t enough to render them unconscious, but it would have been enough to disorient them.”
“Or make it appear as though they were drunk,” Sherlock finished. “So wherever your killer abducted them from, he could have made it appear as though he was escorting someone who was impaired by inebriation.”
Hopkins nodded.
“It explains the lack of restraints,” he said. “None of the victims have marks on their bodies that are consistent with being bound or gagged. He probably abducted them under their own power, and wherever he took them in the intervening forty-eight hours, it must have been secure. There was no chance of them escaping, and so he didn’t bother restraining them.”
“And perhaps he derived some excitement from watching them try to get away,” Sherlock ventured. He rubbed his left hand absently, working the joints between the fingers of his right hand. It hurt him on occasion, and sometimes the pain could be relieved with pressure or heat.
Hopkins visibly winced, but inclined his head.
“It sounds like we have a lot,” he said. “But really, what we have is absolutely nothing. Nothing useful, at any rate. We have no idea why these women were chosen, or who might be a future target. We don’t know where the killer abducts them from, or where he takes them after. We don’t know how he gets the drug into their systems. They are all unidentified, they are all female, they all have paint on their hands, and they all ended up dead somewhere in the city. That’s all we have to go on.”
“And strangulation appears to be the preferred method of murder,” Sherlock said, eyes flicking over the photographs. The women all had deep welts around their necks. Hopkins nodded. “That’s personal.”
“This whole case seems like it should be personal,” Hopkins agreed. “The beatings themselves are brutal, while strangulation forces you to personally, intimately murder a person. It’s not like you can put distance between yourself and a victim, as would be case with a gun. But the women are unknowns, and likely had no personal connection to their killer. And he’s so meticulous about how he commits the crimes. They are methodical and planned out murders; almost sterile. He never slips up or manages to leave anything behind that might point to his identity.”
Sherlock thought for a moment.
“He’s targeting women who won’t be missed, which is on purpose," he mused finally. "He wants victims who won’t be noticed. He’s counting on the fact that no one out there is pushing for answers, and he’s probably hoping that this will fade away eventually when no further progress is made. He knows that no one noticed these women disappear, and he’s hoping no one cares.”
“Then he’s made a mistake,” Hopkins said. His gaze drifted to the wall of victims. “Because I notice them. And I care.”
And that was Hopkins through and through-the man always seemed to feel too much while Sherlock felt too little. While his cases closed rate was among the highest at the Yard, there had been cases over the years that he simply couldn’t wrap. And he was always the last to give up on an unsolvable case, working long hours off the clock for weeks after his supervisors had to force him to officially close it. He had a tendency to skip both meals and sleep during obsessive periods like that, and would lose a great amount of weight in too short a time.
Sherlock always hated it when Hopkins did that.
And Sherlock wished he could give Hopkins the information he needed to move forward with this case, but there were some things even the Great Detective could not do. Cases like these were one of them.
“Hopkins,” he said finally, pulling Hopkins’ attention back to him, “please don’t misunderstand me when I say this, as I am... grateful that you still find my skills to be of some use. But I don’t think I’ll be of much help to you with this case. There are a few things in this world that are quite beyond me. Sexual assault is one of them.”
To his surprise, Hopkins gave a wry smile.
“Then you’ll be on the same level as the rest of us, for once,” he said dryly. “It’s beyond all of us, too, Sherlock. Do what you can. That’s all I ask.”
Sherlock felt some of his resolve crack. “What is it you need from me?”
Hopkins’ face shadowed.
“I’ve got four unidentified victims, Sherlock. Four women who don’t have names. Do you know how we distinguish them?” He pointed at the first victim. “That’s victim number one. Numbers two, three, and four follow her. They’re numbers, Sherlock.”
“And?”
Hopkins grimaced, and Sherlock realised it must have been a callous thing to say. He made note of it for future reference.
“And no person is just a number,” Hopkins said quietly. “I know you don’t do cases like this. I won’t ask you to work the whole case, if the thought is simply unbearable to you. I just - I just need some names. Help me get at least that much. Please.”
Sherlock considered Hopkins for a long moment. He knew he should just walk away now. He should claim not to know anything and leave Hopkins to handle the case, just as it should be. Even when Lestrade was in charge of this team, Sherlock wouldn’t go anywhere near cases like these. They were horrific and senseless, and far from the types of puzzles that his mind craved.
“It wasn’t his only mistake,” he said at last. “Your killer. Assuming that no one would care about these victims-that wasn’t his only mistake.”
Hopkins frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“She’d given birth recently,” Sherlock told him. “Your latest victim.”
“Yes, we’ve figured that much out,” Hopkins said, waving a hand impatiently, “but -”
“She gave birth in a medical facility.”
Hopkins stopped speaking, his hand frozen mid-gesture.
“Our boys didn’t say anything about that,” he said finally.
“They’re probably still waiting to confirm it. Or they’re more incompetent than I usually give them credit for,” Sherlock said. He tapped the photograph of the fourth victim. “There’s a trace of adhesive on her wrist. Given the fact that she was pregnant not that long ago, it’s safe to assume this is from a hospital bracelet. I’d suggest having your team start checking local hospitals for someone who has given birth no less than two days ago, and probably no more than a week ago, given the fact that the adhesive had yet to come off.”
“If someone had been kidnapped from a hospital, we’d have heard about it,” Hopkins said.
“Yes, which means that she wasn’t kidnapped,” Sherlock said impatiently. “She walked out of her own volition. Your killer slipped up, Hopkins. He abducted an unknown woman who, unluckily for him, had been seen recently. Likely, seen by someone who now knows her name.”
Hopkins was quiet for a moment, thinking. But there was a small light of hope in his eyes, which Sherlock hadn't seen in a while, and the deep lines around his mouth faded ever so slightly.
“I’ll put my people on it. We’ll start searching the hospitals.” The ensuing silence was long but incomplete, and Sherlock knew from experience that Hopkins wasn’t quite finished. “When we find something -”
“The moment you find something,” Sherlock broke in, the last of his resolve breaking as he saw the relief on Hopkins' face, “you come get me.”
Hopkins relaxed visibly.
“I will,” he said, giving a grateful nod. He held out his hand, which Sherlock clasped. “Now get on home. I’m glad you were able to come out on such short notice. And - thank you, Sherlock. I owe you a lot for this.”
----
Sherlock stopped by the morgue on his way back to Baker Street.
“It was an experiment,” he explained to Molly Hooper while she meticulously filled out an identity tag for the latest body to grace her table. “I was testing the heat resistance of -”
She held up a quick hand, cutting him off.
“I’d rather not know, Sherlock,” she said, though he could tell that she was fighting a smile. “I may work in a morgue, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy hearing about you blowing up body parts in your kitchen. Anyway, what are you doing down here? I thought you were going to be bringing the toes back on Monday.”
“Hopkins required my assistance,” Sherlock said as he went over and placed the toes back in the frigid storage unit he had nicked them from last week. Molly raised an eyebrow at him.
“I thought you weren’t working any cases for the Yard at the moment.”
“I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. And I’m still not technically - what?”
Now Molly was smirking at him.
“It’s just interesting who you’ll make exceptions for, that’s all,” she said. Sherlock glared at her.
“I don’t know what you’re implying, Dr Hooper, but I think you should keep your deductions to yourself,” he said.
“When I’m wrong, I will,” Molly pointed out cheerfully, and Sherlock rolled his eyes. Her gaze then dropped to his hand, and she sobered. “Pain, again?”
Sherlock looked down. He hadn’t realized he’d been absently rubbing his left hand again, but Molly was indeed correct. The ache was back.
“We’ve talked about this, Sherlock,” she scolded lightly, taking his fingers between her own and manipulating the joints.
“And I’ve chosen to ignore your diagnosis,” Sherlock said waspishly. He winced. “I’m fine. It’s just overuse.”
“It’s the beginnings of arthritis, and you know it.” Molly released his hand and returned to her work. She knew better than to argue with him for long. “Have you been taking any painkillers?”
“I don’t require any.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Molly sighed, though there was teasing in her tone. “Fine, have it your way. Suffer.”
“I will.” Sherlock’s gaze fell on a bouquet of flowers in the far corner of the room, and he smirked. “And what have we here? A secret admirer, Molly, perhaps one your husband doesn’t know about? Dimmock doesn’t know a rose from a lily, and he’s never sent you flowers in all the time you’ve been married.”
He had meant it only to be teasing, as anyone could tell that Molly had actually bought the flowers herself, but Molly’s face fell and she suddenly looked uneasy.
“Actually…” she trailed off. “I was going to visit the cemetery later this afternoon, and I thought… I thought it might be nice. To - to bring him some… Well. It could really do with a bit of colour, don’t you think? His grave.”
Sherlock felt as though someone had punched him in the gut, and he swallowed hard, knowing it showed in his face. Of all his colleagues, Molly and Lestrade were the only ones who had known Victor-albeit briefly-before his first death. And Molly hadn’t even seen Victor prior to his second, actual death, but she still made the occasional visit to his gravesite and would leave a bouquet of flowers behind. Sherlock couldn’t understand why she would do that for someone she had only known for two years more than two decades in the past.
“She liked him,” Lestrade had explained once. “Hell, we all did. And… I don’t think she does it entirely for him. She does it for you, too.”
Sherlock didn’t understand it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find it touching.
“Thank you, Molly,” he said quietly, and stooped to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m certain he would appreciate it, if he could.”
She squeezed his arm.
“Go on,” she said quietly. “Get back to the case. You’ve got someone else who needs you, now.”
------
Sherlock spent the evening puzzling over his embezzlement case. He could really make no further headway on it, though, not until he heard back from his contact within his homeless network, and so he occupied the rest of his evening with mindless tasks. He spent a good hour reorganizing his blog and then worked for a time on a paper he had been writing for a forensics journal. He had written articles and papers for a number of different scientific publications over the years, more so now that John and Lestrade were gone. It helped to pass the time.
You’re puttering, John would have said, and Sherlock grimaced at the thought. Look at you. Forty-nine years old, and you’re puttering around the flat at nine o’clock on a Tuesday. God, Greg’s livelier than you are, and he’s got eighteen years on you.
Sherlock glanced at the clock on the mantel. Lestrade might have been retired, but John kept a regular job at one of their local clinics. His hours were erratic, but he tended not to work much past eight in the evening. Sherlock moved into the kitchen and called up the computer interface.
“Place a call,” Sherlock told the machine. “John Watson.”
He grabbed a heat compress from one of the kitchen drawers while the vid screen rang John. He squeezed it in his right hand until the compress let out a swift crack, indicating that the seal inside had been broken and the chemicals were mixing. It heated quickly after that, and he placed it carefully over the back of his left hand so that it was evenly spread over the joints.
“How long has that been going on?”
Sherlock looked up to see John smiling back at him from the screen. He smiled with his eyes more than his lips, and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepened with his obvious happiness.
“John,” Sherlock greeted, taking a seat at the table. He kicked his chair back so he was balancing on the back two legs, as he always did. “I got your call.”
“This morning.”
Sherlock grimaced. He hated that feature of the vid messaging system. All messages were time-stamped, and then their senders were alerted as to when the recipients actually listened to them. He had a tendency to put off returning vid calls for as long as he could get away with, and John always called him out on it.
“I’ve been occupied,” Sherlock said defensively, and this time it was true. John snorted.
“I can see that,” he said, nodding at Sherlock’s hand. “What did you do to yourself this time?”
“Aged,” Sherlock said, a bit tersely. “It’s likely the beginning stages of arthritis, Molly thinks. It doesn’t act up too often, but I’ve been busy today. Heat helps the… pain.”
He hesitated on the last word, because he hated having to admit that he gave in to his body’s various little protests. John’s face went from amused to concerned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not surprised, though. You suffered major damage to that hand. It’s no wonder it’s the first part of your body to develop joint problems. Have you tried the standard analgesics? Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and the like? Use those if you can; they really do help. If it gets worse, I’ve found that corticosteroids also do the trick.”
Sherlock was already well aware of this information, and he pulled another face.
“Fascinating as this all is,” he said dryly, “I’d rather that our conversations for the foreseeable future not include our various ailments.”
John laughed. “Don’t like to be reminded that you’re getting older?”
“It’s unnecessary when my body sees fit to remind me of that anyway at every turn,” Sherlock said irritably. “And anyway, that’s not what your original call was about.”
“No,” John said, a small smile tugging at his lips, “you’re right. I’ll harass you about your health another time.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes.
“We were actually wanting to know if you wanted to come visit weekend after next,” John went on. “Come down, Sherlock; you look like you could use a break.”
“That might well be true,” Sherlock conceded, “but I can’t get away just yet. I’ve taken on a new case for Hopkins. He’ll be needing me here.”
“I’m sure he could spare you for a weekend,” John said, undeterred. His face turned sombre, and he said quietly, “We haven’t seen you since Christmas.”
“I know,” Sherlock said, and though he wouldn’t say so out loud-and certainly not to John-there was a reason for that. The signs of illness had been all too apparent in Lestrade eight months ago, even though he had gone into remission four months before that. He couldn’t have even been called thin at the time; gaunt was a much more fitting descriptor, and it had been more than unsettling. “I’ve been busy.”
But because this was John, he knew exactly what the issue was. His eyes softened. “Greg’s fine, Sherlock. He’s doing well, and the illness won’t be back. He responded well to the cure, and he’s gained back all of the weight he lost. He’s all right, I promise.”
Sherlock grunted in acknowledgment, but the words were of little comfort. There were more illnesses out there, more cancers, all of them lurking in the shadows. There were only so many cures available; eventually, something was going to slip through and strike him down.
Sherlock couldn’t go through that again.
“How’s the flat?” John asked, trying to steer them onto safer territory.
“Too quiet.”
The words were out before Sherlock could stop them, and this time John was the one who winced.
“We had to leave, Sherlock,” he said gently. “There wasn’t a life there for us anymore. And, well, we’d been married eleven years at that point. It was about time we moved in together.”
“I never expected you to stay,” Sherlock said, placating. I just never thought I’d stay behind. “It’s fine, John.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Always.” Sherlock gave what he hoped was a wry smile. He wanted nothing more than to ease the tension in John’s brow. “I don’t begrudge you your happiness.”
John laughed at that.
“Oh, where is Sherlock Holmes and what have you done with him,” he chuckled. “Listen, Greg’s just taken the dog out for a walk. He’ll be back soon. Do you want to talk to him?”
Sherlock wavered. On the one hand, yes, he did more than anything. On the other, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. He still wasn’t used to seeing Lestrade at anything less than peak physical health, even though he hadn’t been at his peak in years.
“Give him my best,” he said finally. John nodded, though his eyes were sad.
“I will. And… take care of yourself, would you?” He smirked suddenly. “We don’t need another Duck Incident.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, trying to will away the flush that crept up the back of his neck. “If you’re going to invoke that every single time we talk -”
John held up a hand, chuckling. “No, no, no. Just for the next ten years or so.”
“Fantastic. I’m ringing off now.”
John gave him a quick wave. “Say hi to Stanley for us. Oh, and tell him that he’s invited to come along, too, the next time you come down.”
The screen blinked off, and Sherlock sat staring at his reflection for some moments.
Why would they want Hopkins to come along?
He shook his head-John must have simply misspoken-and returned to his paper.
----
Part 3
Part 1
Notes: From here on out, there will be some liberties taken with police and medical procedures. Don't read further if that's going to bother you. Full Author's Notes are in Part 1.
Sherlock found himself staring at a wall of victims.
A row of photographs covered the far wall. Sherlock recognised Hopkins’ handiwork instantly, as the man was very much a visual thinker. He had pinned up the crime scene photographs of four dead women--cropped so that only their faces were visible--in order from first death to most recent murder. Hopkins had then scrawled the relevant details for each victim on note cards and placed them below each photograph.
The victims were all women. According to the note cards, their injuries were consistent with having been inflicted over a period of forty-eight hours, and they had been raped prior to being strangled and dumped.
And, also according to Hopkins’ note cards, they were all nameless.
“Hopkins,” Sherlock said after several long minutes, “this is a serial killer.”
“Yes,” Hopkins said wearily, “I know. Though the higher-ups would prefer that I called it a series of possibly-related murders spanning two years.”
Sherlock spent several seconds sifting through his memories of the past few weeks. Ever since John and Lestrade had moved away, it had been left up to him to scour the newspapers and various media outlets for potential cases. He wasn’t as thorough as John, as he simply didn’t have the patience for it-and hell, was it tedious-but something as big as this wasn’t likely to have slipped his notice.
“I didn’t hear about this,” he said finally. Hopkins nodded.
“You wouldn’t have. We haven’t put out an official press release yet, and the papers haven’t made the connection on their own. Or, if they have, they’re not giving it any coverage.” Hopkins’ words turned bitter. “The victims are all women that no one’s missed so far. The media isn’t going to waste too much time on them.”
They had brought the takeaway with them, but the food had been sitting untouched on the table for close to fifteen minutes now. It was well after noon at this point; the food was long since cold. But Sherlock had neglected to eat this morning, and even the unasked-for thrill of this new case wasn’t enough to distract him from the fact that he was beginning to feel lightheaded. Two decades ago, he could have worked a case for three days straight before feeling the effects of his refusal to eat.
Now, it was just one more thing he couldn’t do.
“All right,” Sherlock said, conceding to his body’s insistence and reaching for a container of food, “take me through it.”
Hopkins drew a breath.
The first victim had been murdered in January 2026. Her body had been found in Regent’s Park late in the month, and there had been signs of rape prior to her death. She had been strangled, had two-day-old bruises and scrapes on her arms, her nails had been torn and broken, and her corpse had been dumped naked. The only curious thing about her body was a streak of grey paint left behind on her hand, which had been noted but had not been deemed relevant to the case.
The second victim was murdered eight months later. Her body was found hidden behind a row of bins, and she’d been sporting two days’ worth of injuries, which supported Hopkins’ idea that the victims only lived for about forty-eight hours after their abductions. She had been discovered naked, her fingertips were bloody, and her corpse had borne signs of strangulation and rape. There was also a smudge of grey paint that covered her left palm.
A connection had not been made between the two corpses at the time because, until victim number three, there had been no connection to make. There had been no reason to believe that the two incidents were related.
But while two events are a coincidence, three incidents are a pattern.
In March of this year, the body of another unknown woman was discovered hidden in an alleyway. She had suffered the same injuries and treatment as the other two victims, and there was the same streak of grey paint on her hand.
“We’re lucky the same team handled the first and third victims. When the third victim was found, one of the sergeants remembered the paint from the first victim, and someone else thought to check for other crimes in London that had resulted in a victim being found with paint on their hands. Hence the discovery of the woman who became victim number two,” Hopkins said as he tapped the picture of the second victim. “Otherwise, we never would have made a connection between the three. It got handed over to our team once the higher-ups realised what we were dealing with.”
Hopkins’ exhaustion was evident this afternoon in his sandpaper-rough words. His voice itself was naturally deep, and his tone was always low whilst his words were usually just a shade above husky. In combination, it had the effect of adding a layer of gravity to even the most innocuous of topics. He never accommodated the clamour; whenever he spoke, all conversation around him ceased. He never had reason to raise his voice, so commanding was his tone. Even Sherlock couldn’t help but listen intently.
“And now there’s a fourth victim, six months after the third,” Sherlock said quietly as he pulled the picture of the unknown woman out of his breast pocket. It was an exact copy of the last one that hung on the wall. Peering at it now, he saw the grey paint on the victim’s palm that was consistent with all the others. He had noticed it earlier, but had not fully registered its presence until now. “That's a large gap between murders. It's entirely possible there are more victims out there that we're simply unaware of."
Hopkins nodded slowly.
"The thought has occurred," he said. "So far, our searches through the various databases have turned up nothing, and I don't have the resources to keep looking. We need to focus on the present until we have reason to start sifting through the past, or this will never get solved."
It was a fair point.
"So what conclusions can we draw?” Sherlock asked.
Hopkins leaned a hip against the long conference table and finally picked up his container of food. He speared a piece of beef on his fork and chewed contemplatively for a moment, staring at the wall of photographs.
“All of the victims are female,” he said. “All of them are unidentifiable, at least at the moment. The grey paint, we can probably safely say at this point, is deliberate. It is always found on their palms, but it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the right or left hand. Their bodies were all found dumped somewhere around the city. They were beaten and raped, and when we ran toxicology reports they all had trace amounts of Rohypnol in their systems. The amount of the drug that we found indicates that the original dosage wasn’t enough to render them unconscious, but it would have been enough to disorient them.”
“Or make it appear as though they were drunk,” Sherlock finished. “So wherever your killer abducted them from, he could have made it appear as though he was escorting someone who was impaired by inebriation.”
Hopkins nodded.
“It explains the lack of restraints,” he said. “None of the victims have marks on their bodies that are consistent with being bound or gagged. He probably abducted them under their own power, and wherever he took them in the intervening forty-eight hours, it must have been secure. There was no chance of them escaping, and so he didn’t bother restraining them.”
“And perhaps he derived some excitement from watching them try to get away,” Sherlock ventured. He rubbed his left hand absently, working the joints between the fingers of his right hand. It hurt him on occasion, and sometimes the pain could be relieved with pressure or heat.
Hopkins visibly winced, but inclined his head.
“It sounds like we have a lot,” he said. “But really, what we have is absolutely nothing. Nothing useful, at any rate. We have no idea why these women were chosen, or who might be a future target. We don’t know where the killer abducts them from, or where he takes them after. We don’t know how he gets the drug into their systems. They are all unidentified, they are all female, they all have paint on their hands, and they all ended up dead somewhere in the city. That’s all we have to go on.”
“And strangulation appears to be the preferred method of murder,” Sherlock said, eyes flicking over the photographs. The women all had deep welts around their necks. Hopkins nodded. “That’s personal.”
“This whole case seems like it should be personal,” Hopkins agreed. “The beatings themselves are brutal, while strangulation forces you to personally, intimately murder a person. It’s not like you can put distance between yourself and a victim, as would be case with a gun. But the women are unknowns, and likely had no personal connection to their killer. And he’s so meticulous about how he commits the crimes. They are methodical and planned out murders; almost sterile. He never slips up or manages to leave anything behind that might point to his identity.”
Sherlock thought for a moment.
“He’s targeting women who won’t be missed, which is on purpose," he mused finally. "He wants victims who won’t be noticed. He’s counting on the fact that no one out there is pushing for answers, and he’s probably hoping that this will fade away eventually when no further progress is made. He knows that no one noticed these women disappear, and he’s hoping no one cares.”
“Then he’s made a mistake,” Hopkins said. His gaze drifted to the wall of victims. “Because I notice them. And I care.”
And that was Hopkins through and through-the man always seemed to feel too much while Sherlock felt too little. While his cases closed rate was among the highest at the Yard, there had been cases over the years that he simply couldn’t wrap. And he was always the last to give up on an unsolvable case, working long hours off the clock for weeks after his supervisors had to force him to officially close it. He had a tendency to skip both meals and sleep during obsessive periods like that, and would lose a great amount of weight in too short a time.
Sherlock always hated it when Hopkins did that.
And Sherlock wished he could give Hopkins the information he needed to move forward with this case, but there were some things even the Great Detective could not do. Cases like these were one of them.
“Hopkins,” he said finally, pulling Hopkins’ attention back to him, “please don’t misunderstand me when I say this, as I am... grateful that you still find my skills to be of some use. But I don’t think I’ll be of much help to you with this case. There are a few things in this world that are quite beyond me. Sexual assault is one of them.”
To his surprise, Hopkins gave a wry smile.
“Then you’ll be on the same level as the rest of us, for once,” he said dryly. “It’s beyond all of us, too, Sherlock. Do what you can. That’s all I ask.”
Sherlock felt some of his resolve crack. “What is it you need from me?”
Hopkins’ face shadowed.
“I’ve got four unidentified victims, Sherlock. Four women who don’t have names. Do you know how we distinguish them?” He pointed at the first victim. “That’s victim number one. Numbers two, three, and four follow her. They’re numbers, Sherlock.”
“And?”
Hopkins grimaced, and Sherlock realised it must have been a callous thing to say. He made note of it for future reference.
“And no person is just a number,” Hopkins said quietly. “I know you don’t do cases like this. I won’t ask you to work the whole case, if the thought is simply unbearable to you. I just - I just need some names. Help me get at least that much. Please.”
Sherlock considered Hopkins for a long moment. He knew he should just walk away now. He should claim not to know anything and leave Hopkins to handle the case, just as it should be. Even when Lestrade was in charge of this team, Sherlock wouldn’t go anywhere near cases like these. They were horrific and senseless, and far from the types of puzzles that his mind craved.
“It wasn’t his only mistake,” he said at last. “Your killer. Assuming that no one would care about these victims-that wasn’t his only mistake.”
Hopkins frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“She’d given birth recently,” Sherlock told him. “Your latest victim.”
“Yes, we’ve figured that much out,” Hopkins said, waving a hand impatiently, “but -”
“She gave birth in a medical facility.”
Hopkins stopped speaking, his hand frozen mid-gesture.
“Our boys didn’t say anything about that,” he said finally.
“They’re probably still waiting to confirm it. Or they’re more incompetent than I usually give them credit for,” Sherlock said. He tapped the photograph of the fourth victim. “There’s a trace of adhesive on her wrist. Given the fact that she was pregnant not that long ago, it’s safe to assume this is from a hospital bracelet. I’d suggest having your team start checking local hospitals for someone who has given birth no less than two days ago, and probably no more than a week ago, given the fact that the adhesive had yet to come off.”
“If someone had been kidnapped from a hospital, we’d have heard about it,” Hopkins said.
“Yes, which means that she wasn’t kidnapped,” Sherlock said impatiently. “She walked out of her own volition. Your killer slipped up, Hopkins. He abducted an unknown woman who, unluckily for him, had been seen recently. Likely, seen by someone who now knows her name.”
Hopkins was quiet for a moment, thinking. But there was a small light of hope in his eyes, which Sherlock hadn't seen in a while, and the deep lines around his mouth faded ever so slightly.
“I’ll put my people on it. We’ll start searching the hospitals.” The ensuing silence was long but incomplete, and Sherlock knew from experience that Hopkins wasn’t quite finished. “When we find something -”
“The moment you find something,” Sherlock broke in, the last of his resolve breaking as he saw the relief on Hopkins' face, “you come get me.”
Hopkins relaxed visibly.
“I will,” he said, giving a grateful nod. He held out his hand, which Sherlock clasped. “Now get on home. I’m glad you were able to come out on such short notice. And - thank you, Sherlock. I owe you a lot for this.”
----
Sherlock stopped by the morgue on his way back to Baker Street.
“It was an experiment,” he explained to Molly Hooper while she meticulously filled out an identity tag for the latest body to grace her table. “I was testing the heat resistance of -”
She held up a quick hand, cutting him off.
“I’d rather not know, Sherlock,” she said, though he could tell that she was fighting a smile. “I may work in a morgue, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy hearing about you blowing up body parts in your kitchen. Anyway, what are you doing down here? I thought you were going to be bringing the toes back on Monday.”
“Hopkins required my assistance,” Sherlock said as he went over and placed the toes back in the frigid storage unit he had nicked them from last week. Molly raised an eyebrow at him.
“I thought you weren’t working any cases for the Yard at the moment.”
“I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. And I’m still not technically - what?”
Now Molly was smirking at him.
“It’s just interesting who you’ll make exceptions for, that’s all,” she said. Sherlock glared at her.
“I don’t know what you’re implying, Dr Hooper, but I think you should keep your deductions to yourself,” he said.
“When I’m wrong, I will,” Molly pointed out cheerfully, and Sherlock rolled his eyes. Her gaze then dropped to his hand, and she sobered. “Pain, again?”
Sherlock looked down. He hadn’t realized he’d been absently rubbing his left hand again, but Molly was indeed correct. The ache was back.
“We’ve talked about this, Sherlock,” she scolded lightly, taking his fingers between her own and manipulating the joints.
“And I’ve chosen to ignore your diagnosis,” Sherlock said waspishly. He winced. “I’m fine. It’s just overuse.”
“It’s the beginnings of arthritis, and you know it.” Molly released his hand and returned to her work. She knew better than to argue with him for long. “Have you been taking any painkillers?”
“I don’t require any.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Molly sighed, though there was teasing in her tone. “Fine, have it your way. Suffer.”
“I will.” Sherlock’s gaze fell on a bouquet of flowers in the far corner of the room, and he smirked. “And what have we here? A secret admirer, Molly, perhaps one your husband doesn’t know about? Dimmock doesn’t know a rose from a lily, and he’s never sent you flowers in all the time you’ve been married.”
He had meant it only to be teasing, as anyone could tell that Molly had actually bought the flowers herself, but Molly’s face fell and she suddenly looked uneasy.
“Actually…” she trailed off. “I was going to visit the cemetery later this afternoon, and I thought… I thought it might be nice. To - to bring him some… Well. It could really do with a bit of colour, don’t you think? His grave.”
Sherlock felt as though someone had punched him in the gut, and he swallowed hard, knowing it showed in his face. Of all his colleagues, Molly and Lestrade were the only ones who had known Victor-albeit briefly-before his first death. And Molly hadn’t even seen Victor prior to his second, actual death, but she still made the occasional visit to his gravesite and would leave a bouquet of flowers behind. Sherlock couldn’t understand why she would do that for someone she had only known for two years more than two decades in the past.
“She liked him,” Lestrade had explained once. “Hell, we all did. And… I don’t think she does it entirely for him. She does it for you, too.”
Sherlock didn’t understand it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find it touching.
“Thank you, Molly,” he said quietly, and stooped to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m certain he would appreciate it, if he could.”
She squeezed his arm.
“Go on,” she said quietly. “Get back to the case. You’ve got someone else who needs you, now.”
------
Sherlock spent the evening puzzling over his embezzlement case. He could really make no further headway on it, though, not until he heard back from his contact within his homeless network, and so he occupied the rest of his evening with mindless tasks. He spent a good hour reorganizing his blog and then worked for a time on a paper he had been writing for a forensics journal. He had written articles and papers for a number of different scientific publications over the years, more so now that John and Lestrade were gone. It helped to pass the time.
You’re puttering, John would have said, and Sherlock grimaced at the thought. Look at you. Forty-nine years old, and you’re puttering around the flat at nine o’clock on a Tuesday. God, Greg’s livelier than you are, and he’s got eighteen years on you.
Sherlock glanced at the clock on the mantel. Lestrade might have been retired, but John kept a regular job at one of their local clinics. His hours were erratic, but he tended not to work much past eight in the evening. Sherlock moved into the kitchen and called up the computer interface.
“Place a call,” Sherlock told the machine. “John Watson.”
He grabbed a heat compress from one of the kitchen drawers while the vid screen rang John. He squeezed it in his right hand until the compress let out a swift crack, indicating that the seal inside had been broken and the chemicals were mixing. It heated quickly after that, and he placed it carefully over the back of his left hand so that it was evenly spread over the joints.
“How long has that been going on?”
Sherlock looked up to see John smiling back at him from the screen. He smiled with his eyes more than his lips, and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepened with his obvious happiness.
“John,” Sherlock greeted, taking a seat at the table. He kicked his chair back so he was balancing on the back two legs, as he always did. “I got your call.”
“This morning.”
Sherlock grimaced. He hated that feature of the vid messaging system. All messages were time-stamped, and then their senders were alerted as to when the recipients actually listened to them. He had a tendency to put off returning vid calls for as long as he could get away with, and John always called him out on it.
“I’ve been occupied,” Sherlock said defensively, and this time it was true. John snorted.
“I can see that,” he said, nodding at Sherlock’s hand. “What did you do to yourself this time?”
“Aged,” Sherlock said, a bit tersely. “It’s likely the beginning stages of arthritis, Molly thinks. It doesn’t act up too often, but I’ve been busy today. Heat helps the… pain.”
He hesitated on the last word, because he hated having to admit that he gave in to his body’s various little protests. John’s face went from amused to concerned.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not surprised, though. You suffered major damage to that hand. It’s no wonder it’s the first part of your body to develop joint problems. Have you tried the standard analgesics? Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and the like? Use those if you can; they really do help. If it gets worse, I’ve found that corticosteroids also do the trick.”
Sherlock was already well aware of this information, and he pulled another face.
“Fascinating as this all is,” he said dryly, “I’d rather that our conversations for the foreseeable future not include our various ailments.”
John laughed. “Don’t like to be reminded that you’re getting older?”
“It’s unnecessary when my body sees fit to remind me of that anyway at every turn,” Sherlock said irritably. “And anyway, that’s not what your original call was about.”
“No,” John said, a small smile tugging at his lips, “you’re right. I’ll harass you about your health another time.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes.
“We were actually wanting to know if you wanted to come visit weekend after next,” John went on. “Come down, Sherlock; you look like you could use a break.”
“That might well be true,” Sherlock conceded, “but I can’t get away just yet. I’ve taken on a new case for Hopkins. He’ll be needing me here.”
“I’m sure he could spare you for a weekend,” John said, undeterred. His face turned sombre, and he said quietly, “We haven’t seen you since Christmas.”
“I know,” Sherlock said, and though he wouldn’t say so out loud-and certainly not to John-there was a reason for that. The signs of illness had been all too apparent in Lestrade eight months ago, even though he had gone into remission four months before that. He couldn’t have even been called thin at the time; gaunt was a much more fitting descriptor, and it had been more than unsettling. “I’ve been busy.”
But because this was John, he knew exactly what the issue was. His eyes softened. “Greg’s fine, Sherlock. He’s doing well, and the illness won’t be back. He responded well to the cure, and he’s gained back all of the weight he lost. He’s all right, I promise.”
Sherlock grunted in acknowledgment, but the words were of little comfort. There were more illnesses out there, more cancers, all of them lurking in the shadows. There were only so many cures available; eventually, something was going to slip through and strike him down.
Sherlock couldn’t go through that again.
“How’s the flat?” John asked, trying to steer them onto safer territory.
“Too quiet.”
The words were out before Sherlock could stop them, and this time John was the one who winced.
“We had to leave, Sherlock,” he said gently. “There wasn’t a life there for us anymore. And, well, we’d been married eleven years at that point. It was about time we moved in together.”
“I never expected you to stay,” Sherlock said, placating. I just never thought I’d stay behind. “It’s fine, John.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Always.” Sherlock gave what he hoped was a wry smile. He wanted nothing more than to ease the tension in John’s brow. “I don’t begrudge you your happiness.”
John laughed at that.
“Oh, where is Sherlock Holmes and what have you done with him,” he chuckled. “Listen, Greg’s just taken the dog out for a walk. He’ll be back soon. Do you want to talk to him?”
Sherlock wavered. On the one hand, yes, he did more than anything. On the other, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. He still wasn’t used to seeing Lestrade at anything less than peak physical health, even though he hadn’t been at his peak in years.
“Give him my best,” he said finally. John nodded, though his eyes were sad.
“I will. And… take care of yourself, would you?” He smirked suddenly. “We don’t need another Duck Incident.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, trying to will away the flush that crept up the back of his neck. “If you’re going to invoke that every single time we talk -”
John held up a hand, chuckling. “No, no, no. Just for the next ten years or so.”
“Fantastic. I’m ringing off now.”
John gave him a quick wave. “Say hi to Stanley for us. Oh, and tell him that he’s invited to come along, too, the next time you come down.”
The screen blinked off, and Sherlock sat staring at his reflection for some moments.
Why would they want Hopkins to come along?
He shook his head-John must have simply misspoken-and returned to his paper.
----
Part 3