FIC: The Case of the Missing Bus Ticket Dirk Gently/Sherlock (gen)
Title: The Case of the Missing Bus Ticket
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock/Dirk Gently
Characters: Dirk Gently, Richard MacDuff, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Rating: U (gen)
Word Count:10,000
Summary: When Dirk and Richard's new client inexplicably fails to stay alive long enough to pay them, their ailing finances mean that a certain amount of subterfuge is required to get them back to London. The sudden death of their client has, however, attracted the attention of another rather more famous (if less holistic) detective and the stage is set for a long distance bus ride of suspense...
The Case of the Missing Bus Ticket, on AO3
"Mr Canterbury?"
Dirk knocked at the door of the hotel room again. "Mr Canterbury? It's Dirk Gently. The detective. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago. You hired me." Richard thought that he heard a very slight element of astonishment in the last few words. He was certainly astonished every time they found a client.
The door opened a crack, then wider. "Who's he?" The voice was wildly agitated.
"My assistant, MacDuff."
"Partner," Richard corrected firmly. "Can we come in?"
They were admitted only with great reluctance and after showing ID. Eric Canterbury repeated what he had said on the phone; he was sure there was someone following him. He couldn't go to the police... his work, they should understand. He just wanted them to find out who was following him and if he was in any danger. He was sure he was in danger.
Richard could believe that he was sure of it; the sweat was streaming down the plump elderly man's face. Dirk's attempt to get more information was just making Eric more and more distraught.
"The missing variable here is food." Dirk said at last, firmly. "It is impossible to operate holistically on an empty stomach. Have you eaten, Mr Canterbury?"
Canterbury indicated that he couldn't possibly.
"In that case, if you will hand over your wallet, my colleague and I will nip out for a quick lunch and resume, fed."
"My wallet?" Canterbury blinked in surprise.
"I will explain the firm's expenses policy in full detail later but for the moment whatever cash you have on you will suffice."
Richard watched in amazement tinged with familiarity as Dirk extracted a small bundle of notes from his new client. He might have protested the daylight robbery but the one way train fares from London genuinely had exhausted their resources and this was the only way that he was going to get dinner.
The agitated man handed over a keycard for the room. "I'm not going to answer the door to anyone. Let yourselves in when you get back. And please hurry! There may not be much time!"
It seemed that Mr Canterbury was wrong. There was time for three courses in the Indian restaurant, and a couple of beers to finish with, which by a coincidence or possibly evidence of the holistic nature of everything used up Mr Canterbury's cash almost exactly. But when Dirk and Richard returned in good spirits to the hotel room and let themselves in, they found their new client stretched out motionless on the floor and entirely dead.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"So that's it." John stood up and stretched. Crouching over the corpse had been uncomfortable. "Dead end."
"Not necessarily." Sherlock was still down on the hotel room's carpet, searching the dead man's clothing.
"You think it was murder?"
"Not directly. You were quite correct; his heart gave way. He was clearly extremely agitated when he arrived yesterday. But someone else was in here with him when he was alive, and someone went through his pockets after he died. Something is missing."
"The reason why he came here?"
"Something else." He spread out the contents of the man's wallet with gloved hands. "Look."
John looked. Driving licence, passport, credit cards, a small photograph of a woman, half a dozen coffee shop loyalty cards, a passcard for the anonymous civil service building where the man had worked. Receipts for coffee. House keys. Heart medication. OysterCard. A creased piece of A4 paper with a corporate copyright notice across the top and nothing else. "Cash?"
"Good. The coffee was paid for in cash, so where is the rest? But something more informative than cash."
John shook his head. "Can't see it. Sorry."
Sherlock managed to look both irritated and smug. "How did he get here?"
John shook his head. "Train? Flight?" They'd caught the train themselves that afternoon, as soon as Mycroft had told them about the civil servant turning up dead. Nearly as soon; there had been time for the brothers to bicker first.
“What was he working on?” Sherlock had demanded. Mycroft had glanced over at John, then had shaken his head. “Classified and not necessarily relevant.”
“Then your case doesn’t interest me.” Sherlock had stood up, swirling his coat around his shoulders. “Investigate his death yourself.”
“I am fully occupied dealing with a potentially serious constitutional crisis,” Mycroft snapped. “Dead people are your department.”
“Only the interesting ones. Civil servants seldom present any original features on dying and I am busy.”
“Sit down!” Mycroft had hissed. “This is to go nowhere else. Nowhere. Canterbury was an investigating agent in MI5. He was looking into what appears to be a major failure of our vetting system. In the last six months several people have changed their political allegiances - turned traitor, if you prefer- without warning and soon after receiving full positive vetting which should have made such conversions impossible.”
“Connections between them?”
“Canterbury’s last report a week ago said that he’d found none but that he was following a possible lead. No details were given. Two days ago he phoned the head of MI5 to say that he was onto something and thought he was being followed. He was reported to be very distressed and barely coherent. The call was traced but he couldn’t be found. The next report of him was from the chambermaid at the hotel who found the body, roughly an hour ago.”
Sherlock had agreed to at least look at the crime scene and John had managed eventually to persuade him that Kingston upon Hull was too far for a black cab, so they’d arrived by train half an hour ago. It seemed logical that Canterbury would have come the same way.
"Neither train nor plane." Sherlock tapped a receipt. "He had a coffee at St Pancras yesterday just after 8am."
"St Pancras?" John frowned. "That's the Eurostar?"
"In this case, no." Sherlock had pulled up a timetable on his phone. "The Megabus. Leaves 8.15 from St Pancras, gets into Hull at 12.25. Our friend then grabbed a second coffee, extra shots, at 12.43 and checked into the hotel room at 12:58."
"What's a Megabus?"
"Budget coach travel. Very budget."
John wrinkled his nose. "Sounds uncomfortable."
"We are about to find out first hand." Sherlock flicked a finger at the near blank paper. "This is the second page of the printout; they took the first with the travel authorisation numbers on. If they had been trying to hide his movements they would have taken this page and the receipts as well. They just wanted the return ticket. Why?"
He was checking the emails on Canterbury's phone. "Here's the confirmation. Booked yesterday morning. Out on the 8.15 yesterday, back on the 18:35 tonight. Cost five pounds. Not taken for its face value then."
Sherlock stood up. "That leaves us very little time to go after the thieves. You and I need to go back to London on the 18:35 Megabus and take a look at our fellow travellers on the way."
* * * * * * * * *
Coach travel was for tourists and students. Dirk announced that he hadn't travelled by coach even when he was a student, and he didn't want to start now. "Are you sure we don't have a single credit card still operational?" he complained. "This is humiliating!"
"Be quiet!" MacDuff hissed. "At least you've got a ticket!" He glanced around at the handful of waiting passengers who were politely keeping their distance from each other, out of earshot. "Even if a stolen one!"
"My client," ("Our client," Richard muttered) "would not have begrudged me the use of a ticket that he was hardly in a position to use. It's just a pity that he was such a skinflint when it came to travel arrangements. Do stop looking guilty, MacDuff. You'll get people's attention."
"I've just robbed a corpse and I'm about to board a coach without a valid ticket. Of course I look guilty! Why don't you give me the ticket and then you can sneak on using your special holistic ninja skills?"
Dirk narrowed his eyes at Richard. "Be a man, MacDuff! I shall be exercising my considerable powers of misdirection on your behalf. All you need to do is walk up the steps when prompted."
"Yeah, right." Richard sighed. If only the stupid coach company took cash. He had just about enough for the nine pounds they'd charge to get back to London, but it was book online or nothing and the last card that he and Dirk had between them had stopped working two days previously. Eric Canterbury had promised a quick and substantial payment if they found out who had been following him but his unexpected demise had rather put paid to that.
The coach didn't turn up on time. It started to rain, turning the discarded tabloid newspaper on the bench into a sodden mess, the headline “Mystery Royal Gave Us £5m Claims UKIP” slowly disintegrating. The streetlights flickered on, the sky darkened. After another half an hour a large blue and yellow bus lumbered around and came to a halt somewhere near the bus stop. The half dozen people waiting sprang into action, almost physically shouldering each other in the eagerness to be the first to put their luggage in the nearly empty coach.
Dirk and Richard didn't have any luggage. As the driver turned his back on the doors so that he could stow the various bags in the hold Dirk shoved Richard up the steps, then planted himself on the bottom step, waving his piece of paper in what seemed a paroxysm of enthusiasm. ""Here's my ticket!"
The driver turned and saw him. His voice held the almost worn out irritation of someone who had said the same thing endless times. "Could you wait until the luggage is in, please?"
"Yes. Yes of course. Sorry. Wait. Yes." Dirk hopped off the bus again, stood patient, head hanging low in apparent contrition. Inside, Richard shuffled quickly down the aisle, carefully avoiding eyecontact with anyone who looked like they might want to be helpful and sat down in a sea of empty seats most of the way to the back, his head ducked low down. There were serious disadvantages in being six foot four when one wanted to be inconspicuous.
* * * * * * * * *
The tall man in the black coat and his shorter companion had caught Sherlock's attention from where he and John lurked some way off the bus stop long before the little performance at the steps. Tall man was apprehensive; short man was almost indecently relaxed. No luggage, not even a briefcase, which suggested that London was home; they'd arrive in the city without personal effects and too late to do anything about them. Where had they stayed in Hull or was it a day trip? Why were they travelling together when they were so clearly at odds? Business? Family? Hobby? Old friends? Sherlock would get a closer look, after they boarded.
The pantomime was so obvious that even John recognised it. "Did they just get that man on without a ticket?"
"Yes." Sherlock was surprised that the driver didn't spot it straight away. People were so unobservant. It raised a whole new raft of questions though. Why smuggle someone on a coach this cheap? The tall man clearly hated the idea, and yet he'd gone along with it.
Two men, one ticket between them. The dead man's ticket? Why not just buy two more? Sherlock watched the driver cross numbers off his list as the passengers boarded. Obvious. They were trying to lay a trail suggesting that Canterbury had come back to London on this coach as planned. Someone had to use his ticket and they didn't want a credit card record for the purchase of an additional one.
John shook his head at this. "But the body's in Hull."
Sherlock shrugged. "Maybe it will disappear. Maybe they only need this proof for a short time. No need to speculate yet." The last passengers were boarding. He strode across the concrete to the driver. "Two more, please."
"Was wondering where you two were. Got lost?" The driver looked down at his list and Sherlock could see him crossing off the last two numbers. "That's everyone."
Sherlock paused briefly at the top of the steps to monitor all his potential suspects. The odd couple were near the back, the tall man slouched down in his seat looking acutely uncomfortable, the shorter one scribbling something on the back of a familiar-looking A4 sheet of paper. Sherlock strode down the aisle and swung into a seat three rows behind them.
* * * * * * * * *
Canterbury. Canterbury, York. Canterbury Tales. Interesting. The last passengers were boarding. Megabus. A ridiculous way to travel. There was rain down the back of his neck. Scunthorpe. Dirk was sure that nowhere could have a name like Scunthorpe and not be cosmically significant.
He glanced up to see the final two passengers board. Ah. The holistic method comes good again. He wrote down a few more words, drew some circles and lines with great satisfaction. Eric Canterbury's case was progressing nicely. All he needed now was someone to pay him.
"What are you doing?" MacDuff sounded more than usually grumpy.
Dirk decided to overlook it. "I'm solving this case."
"What case? The man was ill, probably hallucinating. No-one was following him."
"You say that, and yet... did you see the men who just sat behind us?"
"Tall guy, nice coat. And the other one. What about them?"
The bus jerked into motion. Dirk smiled.
"This rather horrible bus is carrying not just one but two of the most prominent detectives in Britain. Possibly the world. Call that coincidence, if you will. I call it extremely significant."
MacDuff glanced over his shoulder, slumped back, fast. "That's Sherlock Holmes!"
"And the next stop is Scunthorpe. This is big, MacDuff. Very big."
Richard snorted. "Sherlock Holmes has solved some of the highest profile crimes in the last year. You find lost cats, or fail to. You're hardly comparable."
Dirk let that go. Admittedly Sherlock Holmes had yet to embrace the fully holistic method; still his results were rather impressive. "Why this coach, MacDuff? That's the burning question."
"Maybe he's tracking down a stolen coach ticket." MacDuff suggested glumly.
Dirk considered it. "You think he might be working for the beneficiaries? I wonder how much he charges per hour. The ticket was only worth £5."
"£9 now. It goes up as the coach time gets nearer."
"Does it indeed? Why didn't you mention that before?" That was a new piece of evidence. He wrote it on his piece of paper, turned the page upside down, drew a wiggly line between that and Sherlock, turned it back again. "Quick! How many passengers on this bus?"
MacDuff stuck his head up briefly. "Fourteen, including us."
Dirk wrote it down, underlined it. "Fourteen, fourteen. Fourteen!" Of course! He needed to take a look at the clipboard of passenger numbers lying on the dashboard. He crawled out of his seat, lurched miserably to the front. "Can we stop please? I think I'm going to be sick!"
The driver shook his head, attention on the dual carriageway. "Can't I'm afraid. Safety regulations. We'll be in Scunthorpe in twenty minutes. If you can't make it that far you'll have to use the toilet."
Dirk gave a masterful performance of a pitiful groan and staggered back along the aisle to his seat. As he slid back into it he dropped his palmed camera into his lap and pulled out his phone and a lead. The photo wasn't perfect but on zoom he could just about make out the numbers on the list. He passed it to his assistant and told him to get calculating.
* * * * * * * * *
Tall man had recognised him, undoubtedly, was even more worried, yet the short man was making no attempt to pretend to be an ordinary passenger. He had just unconcernedly taken a photo of the driver's list full in Sherlock's line of sight. He must be certain that his cover was blown; why didn't he care?
"Maybe they intend to do away with us before we get back to London," John suggested cheerfully. He seemed to be enjoying the coach trip, curled up against the window with one of those mindless thrillers he insisted on reading. This was at least a distraction, even if a potentially lethal one. Coaches were uncomfortable and they made such unnecessary diversions. Scunthorpe, indeed. Sherlock took another boiled sweet and went back to watching the back of the heads of the peculiar duo, ready to act at the first sign of danger. It was possible to hijack a coach, and John's hypothesis could not be completely dismissed.
At Scunthorpe no passengers got on or off but the coach changed drivers. Tall man sat up as soon as the original driver was out of sight, with a sigh of relief audible to Sherlock, three rows back. He had apparently been seriously worried about being caught without a ticket. The other man hadn't shown a trace of nerves all trip.
One professional conman and thief, one amateur. The substitution for Canterbury would have been far more straightforward without the second man along. He must have an essential role in whatever was going to happen next. Some sort of specialist- explosives? Computers? Bioweapons? The man was calculating something, scribbling intermittently. That didn't bode well at all. Sherlock urgently needed a better look at him.
* * * * * * * * *
Richard was getting a headache from trying to decipher the indistinct photo. This was one of Dirk's random sidetracks; absolutely pointless. Still, the driver had gone and the new one had no way of knowing that he hadn't got a ticket. Unless he counted the passengers. Would he do that? He might. Oh God, the nightmare wasn't yet over. How many hours to go? Better keep his head down. Richard swiftly bent over the piece of paper again.
Another ten minutes and he was done. He shoved the paper under Dirk's nose. "Eighty four pounds fifty, including booking fees. Going to tell me what it's all about?"
"Evidence, MacDuff. The plot thickens." Dirk turned his head to the man standing in the aisle. "Sherlock...may I call you Sherlock?"
"As you like. And what should I call you?" The man's voice was deep and quizzical.
"Oh, Dirk, please; don’t stand on ceremony. We are after all professional colleagues. How much did you pay for your ticket?”
Sherlock slid into the seat opposite. “I didn’t pay anything for it. My associate did. What is the significance?"
Dirk tipped his head back, crossed his legs with some difficulty in the confined area. "Everything is potentially significant, Sherl...may I call you Sherl?" He closed his eyes without waiting for an answer, apparently contemplating profundities too deep to be shared.
Richard caught Sherlock's eye without meaning to. The country’s most famous detective raised an eyebrow at him. "And you are?"
He shrank away. "Nobody, really. I'm just his assistant.” The space where his ticket would have been tucked away, had he had one, was burning a guilty hole through his wallet, or possibly the Indian meal and the beers followed by too much hunching over was disagreeing with him
Dirk waved a hand without opening his eyes. “Sherlock Holmes, Richard…”
“York,” MacDuff said hastily. It was the first name he could think of. Giving his own would clearly be a one way ticket to prison.
“York,” Sherlock repeated with a faint edge of amusement. “Mr York. Dirk. I’ll leave you to sleep undisturbed.”
* * * * * * * * *
“Richard York? Somebody’s parents liked Shakespeare, or possibly rainbows.”
Sherlock shook his head. “York’s not his real name, obviously. He made it up on the spot. An interesting choice, given the name of the deceased.”
“Canterbury? As in York and Canterbury? That wouldn’t be very clever.”
“He’s too frightened to be clever. I don’t think our friend Richard is the brains of the outfit. I don’t yet know what he is, however.”
They had moved to the back of the coach and were now talking in whispers. Outside the M1 trundled by backwards at almost legal speed for a coach, darkness shrouding the far edge of the hard shoulder a bare few feet from the window. “What about the other one?”
“He claims to be called Dirk.”
“Dirk. Nice name. Assassin, do you think?” John had been staring out of the window at the hypnotic central reservation for too long; everything in the bus had a faint air of unreality, including the idea of a professional killer with a sobriquet that unsubtle squeezed into a seat six rows in front.
“I don’t yet know. How much did you pay for the tickets?”
John pulled out his phone, brought up the text. “Nine pounds each plus 50p booking charge.”
“Eighteen fifty, or nineteen pounds?”
“Eighteen fifty. Why?”
“My ticket- the emphasis was on mine. Why should my ticket be different from anyone else’s?” He grabbed John’s phone, started tapping at the keyboard.
“Ah!” A note of triumph. “Variable pricing.” At John’s look of incomprehension. “Encourage purchasers with cheap headline fares for advance purchases but make the bulk of their profits from high last-minute prices.”
“Like the airlines,” John said.
“Exactly. Now why would our possible assassin and stealer of state secrets be interested in that?”
“Especially since he didn’t even pay for his.” John hadn’t been entirely sold on the whole slow motion coach chase thing back in Hull, particularly since he was positive that the man in the hotel room had died of a thoroughly uninteresting heart attack, but an unflappable and mysterious hired killer called Dirk sharing their bus was slightly more intriguing. A pity that the man looked quite so much like a dishevelled estate agent, but that had to be camouflage.
“What was on the tall guy’s bit of paper?”
“A list of scrawled numbers and what looked like a total figure at the bottom. None of the numbers were decipherable. Not enough answers, John, and too many questions.” He shook himself. “I’m getting distracted. Never mind the bit of paper for now. Why is only one of them terrified? What would make you frightened enough to give yourself away to even the most unobservant detective while you’re sitting on a coach?”
“Guilty conscience?” John suggested. “Maybe he caused Canterbury’s death?”
“A heart attack.”
“Maybe he’d been blackmailing him. Mycroft did say that Canterbury had been reported as very nervous in the days before he died.
Sherlock shook his head dismissively. “Blackmail’s a profession for those not overburdened with conscience. They don’t go to pieces over their victim’s demise from natural causes.”
“Maybe we missed something on the corpse, then, and he was killed some other way.”
“I didn’t miss anything.” Sherlock was staring intently at the back of the man’s head just visible over the back of the seat. John reckoned he must still be slouching down.
“Ok, try this. They took something from the room with the body and he’s worried that we, or someone else, will find it. We know they were there, and he does seem to be still trying to hide.”
Sherlock at least bothered to turn to look at him this time. “Slightly more plausible. But why isn’t Dirk worried?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know about it? Maybe he wasn’t even there? He could be just a hired guard with a clean conscience.”
There was a snort. “You go and talk to them.”
“About what?”
“Start with ticket prices,” Sherlock said cheerfully. “They already know who we are so you don’t need to embarrass yourself by trying to practice subterfuge. Tell them how much my ticket cost and take it from there.”
“Why am I doing this?” John protested, already getting to his feet.
“Because it’s too soon to ask the right questions and I can rely on you to ask the wrong ones.”
“Cheers for that. How will I know that I’m not asking a right one by accident?”
“I have full confidence in you. Off you go.”
* * * * * * * * *
This time it was the other one who came down the aisle and perched rather hesitantly on the seat across from Dirk. What was his name? John something. Or was it James? No, John. The sidekick. Dirk smiled at him with the bit of his mouth that didn’t have a strawberry fruit drop in it, realised the lopsided result must appear slightly patronising, decided that slightly patronising was probably a look he had a use for in future and he must remember how it was done, and went back to rolling the sweet thoughtfully around his mouth. The bus braked and his stomach turned slightly, not for the first time. Bus travel did not agree with him at all.
“Nine pounds each,” the man offered.
Dirk nodded. “Time of booking?”
He hesitated briefly. “Um. Half four?”
Dirk consulted the bit of paper Richard had returned to him. “You two were the last to book. Nine pounds, huh? What does your detective make of that?”
John shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I know. He hasn’t said anything about it.”
“Hah! It appears that the holistic method beats the deductive hands down!” Dirk would be the first to admit that he felt most definitely smug. Not that it was a competition, obviously, but if it had been he would be a good lap and a half ahead. Maybe two laps.
“What’s the holistic method, when it’s at home?” The note of scepticism was wearily familiar. Dirk spent a little time explaining how the interconnectedness of all things meant that the answer to any question potentially lay in the examination of any random item that the detective encountered, in this case, Megabus’s ticket prices.
“So now you claim to be a detective. Called Dirk. What was this question?” John enquired. The sceptical tone hadn’t noticeably reduced.
Dirk briefly considered telling him, decided against it. Sherlock Holmes was frequently engaged on what the papers were fond of calling “police work”. While Mr Canterbury had undoubtedly died of perfectly explicable causes Dirk suspected that leaving a dead body in a hotel room without notifying the relevant authorities, not to mention taking his bus ticket, was the sort of thing that the stiflingly bureaucratic police service looked definitely askance at. “That’s confidential to my client, I’m afraid.”
“And who is your client?”
“That’s also confidential.” Dirk was fairly sure that the man or woman he finally talked into paying for all this top notch holistic detective work would probably want their identity kept secret. He was merely anticipating their desires.
John rubbed his eyes a little wearily. “But the answer lies in the coach pricing system?”
“Absolutely.” He felt a little sorry for his floundering counterparts. He could afford to be slightly magnanimous. (Two lap lead, maybe two and a half.) “There have been thirteen paying customers on this bus. The total ticket sales came to eighty four pounds fifty. Including booking fees.”
John seemed to be waiting for him to go on. Painfully slow, painfully. The bus swerved to change lanes and Dirk felt slightly nauseous again. He closed his eyes again and felt a little better. “Your detective is a consulting one. Consult him about it. I now require solitude for deep cogitation.”
John stumbled up and staggered back. Dirk was a little surprised not to have Richard fussing at him but the steady breathing next to him suggested that MacDuff’s excessive and prolonged state of agitation had finally worn him out. The man was asleep.
Part 2
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock/Dirk Gently
Characters: Dirk Gently, Richard MacDuff, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Rating: U (gen)
Word Count:10,000
Summary: When Dirk and Richard's new client inexplicably fails to stay alive long enough to pay them, their ailing finances mean that a certain amount of subterfuge is required to get them back to London. The sudden death of their client has, however, attracted the attention of another rather more famous (if less holistic) detective and the stage is set for a long distance bus ride of suspense...
The Case of the Missing Bus Ticket, on AO3
"Mr Canterbury?"
Dirk knocked at the door of the hotel room again. "Mr Canterbury? It's Dirk Gently. The detective. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago. You hired me." Richard thought that he heard a very slight element of astonishment in the last few words. He was certainly astonished every time they found a client.
The door opened a crack, then wider. "Who's he?" The voice was wildly agitated.
"My assistant, MacDuff."
"Partner," Richard corrected firmly. "Can we come in?"
They were admitted only with great reluctance and after showing ID. Eric Canterbury repeated what he had said on the phone; he was sure there was someone following him. He couldn't go to the police... his work, they should understand. He just wanted them to find out who was following him and if he was in any danger. He was sure he was in danger.
Richard could believe that he was sure of it; the sweat was streaming down the plump elderly man's face. Dirk's attempt to get more information was just making Eric more and more distraught.
"The missing variable here is food." Dirk said at last, firmly. "It is impossible to operate holistically on an empty stomach. Have you eaten, Mr Canterbury?"
Canterbury indicated that he couldn't possibly.
"In that case, if you will hand over your wallet, my colleague and I will nip out for a quick lunch and resume, fed."
"My wallet?" Canterbury blinked in surprise.
"I will explain the firm's expenses policy in full detail later but for the moment whatever cash you have on you will suffice."
Richard watched in amazement tinged with familiarity as Dirk extracted a small bundle of notes from his new client. He might have protested the daylight robbery but the one way train fares from London genuinely had exhausted their resources and this was the only way that he was going to get dinner.
The agitated man handed over a keycard for the room. "I'm not going to answer the door to anyone. Let yourselves in when you get back. And please hurry! There may not be much time!"
It seemed that Mr Canterbury was wrong. There was time for three courses in the Indian restaurant, and a couple of beers to finish with, which by a coincidence or possibly evidence of the holistic nature of everything used up Mr Canterbury's cash almost exactly. But when Dirk and Richard returned in good spirits to the hotel room and let themselves in, they found their new client stretched out motionless on the floor and entirely dead.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"So that's it." John stood up and stretched. Crouching over the corpse had been uncomfortable. "Dead end."
"Not necessarily." Sherlock was still down on the hotel room's carpet, searching the dead man's clothing.
"You think it was murder?"
"Not directly. You were quite correct; his heart gave way. He was clearly extremely agitated when he arrived yesterday. But someone else was in here with him when he was alive, and someone went through his pockets after he died. Something is missing."
"The reason why he came here?"
"Something else." He spread out the contents of the man's wallet with gloved hands. "Look."
John looked. Driving licence, passport, credit cards, a small photograph of a woman, half a dozen coffee shop loyalty cards, a passcard for the anonymous civil service building where the man had worked. Receipts for coffee. House keys. Heart medication. OysterCard. A creased piece of A4 paper with a corporate copyright notice across the top and nothing else. "Cash?"
"Good. The coffee was paid for in cash, so where is the rest? But something more informative than cash."
John shook his head. "Can't see it. Sorry."
Sherlock managed to look both irritated and smug. "How did he get here?"
John shook his head. "Train? Flight?" They'd caught the train themselves that afternoon, as soon as Mycroft had told them about the civil servant turning up dead. Nearly as soon; there had been time for the brothers to bicker first.
“What was he working on?” Sherlock had demanded. Mycroft had glanced over at John, then had shaken his head. “Classified and not necessarily relevant.”
“Then your case doesn’t interest me.” Sherlock had stood up, swirling his coat around his shoulders. “Investigate his death yourself.”
“I am fully occupied dealing with a potentially serious constitutional crisis,” Mycroft snapped. “Dead people are your department.”
“Only the interesting ones. Civil servants seldom present any original features on dying and I am busy.”
“Sit down!” Mycroft had hissed. “This is to go nowhere else. Nowhere. Canterbury was an investigating agent in MI5. He was looking into what appears to be a major failure of our vetting system. In the last six months several people have changed their political allegiances - turned traitor, if you prefer- without warning and soon after receiving full positive vetting which should have made such conversions impossible.”
“Connections between them?”
“Canterbury’s last report a week ago said that he’d found none but that he was following a possible lead. No details were given. Two days ago he phoned the head of MI5 to say that he was onto something and thought he was being followed. He was reported to be very distressed and barely coherent. The call was traced but he couldn’t be found. The next report of him was from the chambermaid at the hotel who found the body, roughly an hour ago.”
Sherlock had agreed to at least look at the crime scene and John had managed eventually to persuade him that Kingston upon Hull was too far for a black cab, so they’d arrived by train half an hour ago. It seemed logical that Canterbury would have come the same way.
"Neither train nor plane." Sherlock tapped a receipt. "He had a coffee at St Pancras yesterday just after 8am."
"St Pancras?" John frowned. "That's the Eurostar?"
"In this case, no." Sherlock had pulled up a timetable on his phone. "The Megabus. Leaves 8.15 from St Pancras, gets into Hull at 12.25. Our friend then grabbed a second coffee, extra shots, at 12.43 and checked into the hotel room at 12:58."
"What's a Megabus?"
"Budget coach travel. Very budget."
John wrinkled his nose. "Sounds uncomfortable."
"We are about to find out first hand." Sherlock flicked a finger at the near blank paper. "This is the second page of the printout; they took the first with the travel authorisation numbers on. If they had been trying to hide his movements they would have taken this page and the receipts as well. They just wanted the return ticket. Why?"
He was checking the emails on Canterbury's phone. "Here's the confirmation. Booked yesterday morning. Out on the 8.15 yesterday, back on the 18:35 tonight. Cost five pounds. Not taken for its face value then."
Sherlock stood up. "That leaves us very little time to go after the thieves. You and I need to go back to London on the 18:35 Megabus and take a look at our fellow travellers on the way."
* * * * * * * * *
Coach travel was for tourists and students. Dirk announced that he hadn't travelled by coach even when he was a student, and he didn't want to start now. "Are you sure we don't have a single credit card still operational?" he complained. "This is humiliating!"
"Be quiet!" MacDuff hissed. "At least you've got a ticket!" He glanced around at the handful of waiting passengers who were politely keeping their distance from each other, out of earshot. "Even if a stolen one!"
"My client," ("Our client," Richard muttered) "would not have begrudged me the use of a ticket that he was hardly in a position to use. It's just a pity that he was such a skinflint when it came to travel arrangements. Do stop looking guilty, MacDuff. You'll get people's attention."
"I've just robbed a corpse and I'm about to board a coach without a valid ticket. Of course I look guilty! Why don't you give me the ticket and then you can sneak on using your special holistic ninja skills?"
Dirk narrowed his eyes at Richard. "Be a man, MacDuff! I shall be exercising my considerable powers of misdirection on your behalf. All you need to do is walk up the steps when prompted."
"Yeah, right." Richard sighed. If only the stupid coach company took cash. He had just about enough for the nine pounds they'd charge to get back to London, but it was book online or nothing and the last card that he and Dirk had between them had stopped working two days previously. Eric Canterbury had promised a quick and substantial payment if they found out who had been following him but his unexpected demise had rather put paid to that.
The coach didn't turn up on time. It started to rain, turning the discarded tabloid newspaper on the bench into a sodden mess, the headline “Mystery Royal Gave Us £5m Claims UKIP” slowly disintegrating. The streetlights flickered on, the sky darkened. After another half an hour a large blue and yellow bus lumbered around and came to a halt somewhere near the bus stop. The half dozen people waiting sprang into action, almost physically shouldering each other in the eagerness to be the first to put their luggage in the nearly empty coach.
Dirk and Richard didn't have any luggage. As the driver turned his back on the doors so that he could stow the various bags in the hold Dirk shoved Richard up the steps, then planted himself on the bottom step, waving his piece of paper in what seemed a paroxysm of enthusiasm. ""Here's my ticket!"
The driver turned and saw him. His voice held the almost worn out irritation of someone who had said the same thing endless times. "Could you wait until the luggage is in, please?"
"Yes. Yes of course. Sorry. Wait. Yes." Dirk hopped off the bus again, stood patient, head hanging low in apparent contrition. Inside, Richard shuffled quickly down the aisle, carefully avoiding eyecontact with anyone who looked like they might want to be helpful and sat down in a sea of empty seats most of the way to the back, his head ducked low down. There were serious disadvantages in being six foot four when one wanted to be inconspicuous.
* * * * * * * * *
The tall man in the black coat and his shorter companion had caught Sherlock's attention from where he and John lurked some way off the bus stop long before the little performance at the steps. Tall man was apprehensive; short man was almost indecently relaxed. No luggage, not even a briefcase, which suggested that London was home; they'd arrive in the city without personal effects and too late to do anything about them. Where had they stayed in Hull or was it a day trip? Why were they travelling together when they were so clearly at odds? Business? Family? Hobby? Old friends? Sherlock would get a closer look, after they boarded.
The pantomime was so obvious that even John recognised it. "Did they just get that man on without a ticket?"
"Yes." Sherlock was surprised that the driver didn't spot it straight away. People were so unobservant. It raised a whole new raft of questions though. Why smuggle someone on a coach this cheap? The tall man clearly hated the idea, and yet he'd gone along with it.
Two men, one ticket between them. The dead man's ticket? Why not just buy two more? Sherlock watched the driver cross numbers off his list as the passengers boarded. Obvious. They were trying to lay a trail suggesting that Canterbury had come back to London on this coach as planned. Someone had to use his ticket and they didn't want a credit card record for the purchase of an additional one.
John shook his head at this. "But the body's in Hull."
Sherlock shrugged. "Maybe it will disappear. Maybe they only need this proof for a short time. No need to speculate yet." The last passengers were boarding. He strode across the concrete to the driver. "Two more, please."
"Was wondering where you two were. Got lost?" The driver looked down at his list and Sherlock could see him crossing off the last two numbers. "That's everyone."
Sherlock paused briefly at the top of the steps to monitor all his potential suspects. The odd couple were near the back, the tall man slouched down in his seat looking acutely uncomfortable, the shorter one scribbling something on the back of a familiar-looking A4 sheet of paper. Sherlock strode down the aisle and swung into a seat three rows behind them.
* * * * * * * * *
Canterbury. Canterbury, York. Canterbury Tales. Interesting. The last passengers were boarding. Megabus. A ridiculous way to travel. There was rain down the back of his neck. Scunthorpe. Dirk was sure that nowhere could have a name like Scunthorpe and not be cosmically significant.
He glanced up to see the final two passengers board. Ah. The holistic method comes good again. He wrote down a few more words, drew some circles and lines with great satisfaction. Eric Canterbury's case was progressing nicely. All he needed now was someone to pay him.
"What are you doing?" MacDuff sounded more than usually grumpy.
Dirk decided to overlook it. "I'm solving this case."
"What case? The man was ill, probably hallucinating. No-one was following him."
"You say that, and yet... did you see the men who just sat behind us?"
"Tall guy, nice coat. And the other one. What about them?"
The bus jerked into motion. Dirk smiled.
"This rather horrible bus is carrying not just one but two of the most prominent detectives in Britain. Possibly the world. Call that coincidence, if you will. I call it extremely significant."
MacDuff glanced over his shoulder, slumped back, fast. "That's Sherlock Holmes!"
"And the next stop is Scunthorpe. This is big, MacDuff. Very big."
Richard snorted. "Sherlock Holmes has solved some of the highest profile crimes in the last year. You find lost cats, or fail to. You're hardly comparable."
Dirk let that go. Admittedly Sherlock Holmes had yet to embrace the fully holistic method; still his results were rather impressive. "Why this coach, MacDuff? That's the burning question."
"Maybe he's tracking down a stolen coach ticket." MacDuff suggested glumly.
Dirk considered it. "You think he might be working for the beneficiaries? I wonder how much he charges per hour. The ticket was only worth £5."
"£9 now. It goes up as the coach time gets nearer."
"Does it indeed? Why didn't you mention that before?" That was a new piece of evidence. He wrote it on his piece of paper, turned the page upside down, drew a wiggly line between that and Sherlock, turned it back again. "Quick! How many passengers on this bus?"
MacDuff stuck his head up briefly. "Fourteen, including us."
Dirk wrote it down, underlined it. "Fourteen, fourteen. Fourteen!" Of course! He needed to take a look at the clipboard of passenger numbers lying on the dashboard. He crawled out of his seat, lurched miserably to the front. "Can we stop please? I think I'm going to be sick!"
The driver shook his head, attention on the dual carriageway. "Can't I'm afraid. Safety regulations. We'll be in Scunthorpe in twenty minutes. If you can't make it that far you'll have to use the toilet."
Dirk gave a masterful performance of a pitiful groan and staggered back along the aisle to his seat. As he slid back into it he dropped his palmed camera into his lap and pulled out his phone and a lead. The photo wasn't perfect but on zoom he could just about make out the numbers on the list. He passed it to his assistant and told him to get calculating.
* * * * * * * * *
Tall man had recognised him, undoubtedly, was even more worried, yet the short man was making no attempt to pretend to be an ordinary passenger. He had just unconcernedly taken a photo of the driver's list full in Sherlock's line of sight. He must be certain that his cover was blown; why didn't he care?
"Maybe they intend to do away with us before we get back to London," John suggested cheerfully. He seemed to be enjoying the coach trip, curled up against the window with one of those mindless thrillers he insisted on reading. This was at least a distraction, even if a potentially lethal one. Coaches were uncomfortable and they made such unnecessary diversions. Scunthorpe, indeed. Sherlock took another boiled sweet and went back to watching the back of the heads of the peculiar duo, ready to act at the first sign of danger. It was possible to hijack a coach, and John's hypothesis could not be completely dismissed.
At Scunthorpe no passengers got on or off but the coach changed drivers. Tall man sat up as soon as the original driver was out of sight, with a sigh of relief audible to Sherlock, three rows back. He had apparently been seriously worried about being caught without a ticket. The other man hadn't shown a trace of nerves all trip.
One professional conman and thief, one amateur. The substitution for Canterbury would have been far more straightforward without the second man along. He must have an essential role in whatever was going to happen next. Some sort of specialist- explosives? Computers? Bioweapons? The man was calculating something, scribbling intermittently. That didn't bode well at all. Sherlock urgently needed a better look at him.
* * * * * * * * *
Richard was getting a headache from trying to decipher the indistinct photo. This was one of Dirk's random sidetracks; absolutely pointless. Still, the driver had gone and the new one had no way of knowing that he hadn't got a ticket. Unless he counted the passengers. Would he do that? He might. Oh God, the nightmare wasn't yet over. How many hours to go? Better keep his head down. Richard swiftly bent over the piece of paper again.
Another ten minutes and he was done. He shoved the paper under Dirk's nose. "Eighty four pounds fifty, including booking fees. Going to tell me what it's all about?"
"Evidence, MacDuff. The plot thickens." Dirk turned his head to the man standing in the aisle. "Sherlock...may I call you Sherlock?"
"As you like. And what should I call you?" The man's voice was deep and quizzical.
"Oh, Dirk, please; don’t stand on ceremony. We are after all professional colleagues. How much did you pay for your ticket?”
Sherlock slid into the seat opposite. “I didn’t pay anything for it. My associate did. What is the significance?"
Dirk tipped his head back, crossed his legs with some difficulty in the confined area. "Everything is potentially significant, Sherl...may I call you Sherl?" He closed his eyes without waiting for an answer, apparently contemplating profundities too deep to be shared.
Richard caught Sherlock's eye without meaning to. The country’s most famous detective raised an eyebrow at him. "And you are?"
He shrank away. "Nobody, really. I'm just his assistant.” The space where his ticket would have been tucked away, had he had one, was burning a guilty hole through his wallet, or possibly the Indian meal and the beers followed by too much hunching over was disagreeing with him
Dirk waved a hand without opening his eyes. “Sherlock Holmes, Richard…”
“York,” MacDuff said hastily. It was the first name he could think of. Giving his own would clearly be a one way ticket to prison.
“York,” Sherlock repeated with a faint edge of amusement. “Mr York. Dirk. I’ll leave you to sleep undisturbed.”
* * * * * * * * *
“Richard York? Somebody’s parents liked Shakespeare, or possibly rainbows.”
Sherlock shook his head. “York’s not his real name, obviously. He made it up on the spot. An interesting choice, given the name of the deceased.”
“Canterbury? As in York and Canterbury? That wouldn’t be very clever.”
“He’s too frightened to be clever. I don’t think our friend Richard is the brains of the outfit. I don’t yet know what he is, however.”
They had moved to the back of the coach and were now talking in whispers. Outside the M1 trundled by backwards at almost legal speed for a coach, darkness shrouding the far edge of the hard shoulder a bare few feet from the window. “What about the other one?”
“He claims to be called Dirk.”
“Dirk. Nice name. Assassin, do you think?” John had been staring out of the window at the hypnotic central reservation for too long; everything in the bus had a faint air of unreality, including the idea of a professional killer with a sobriquet that unsubtle squeezed into a seat six rows in front.
“I don’t yet know. How much did you pay for the tickets?”
John pulled out his phone, brought up the text. “Nine pounds each plus 50p booking charge.”
“Eighteen fifty, or nineteen pounds?”
“Eighteen fifty. Why?”
“My ticket- the emphasis was on mine. Why should my ticket be different from anyone else’s?” He grabbed John’s phone, started tapping at the keyboard.
“Ah!” A note of triumph. “Variable pricing.” At John’s look of incomprehension. “Encourage purchasers with cheap headline fares for advance purchases but make the bulk of their profits from high last-minute prices.”
“Like the airlines,” John said.
“Exactly. Now why would our possible assassin and stealer of state secrets be interested in that?”
“Especially since he didn’t even pay for his.” John hadn’t been entirely sold on the whole slow motion coach chase thing back in Hull, particularly since he was positive that the man in the hotel room had died of a thoroughly uninteresting heart attack, but an unflappable and mysterious hired killer called Dirk sharing their bus was slightly more intriguing. A pity that the man looked quite so much like a dishevelled estate agent, but that had to be camouflage.
“What was on the tall guy’s bit of paper?”
“A list of scrawled numbers and what looked like a total figure at the bottom. None of the numbers were decipherable. Not enough answers, John, and too many questions.” He shook himself. “I’m getting distracted. Never mind the bit of paper for now. Why is only one of them terrified? What would make you frightened enough to give yourself away to even the most unobservant detective while you’re sitting on a coach?”
“Guilty conscience?” John suggested. “Maybe he caused Canterbury’s death?”
“A heart attack.”
“Maybe he’d been blackmailing him. Mycroft did say that Canterbury had been reported as very nervous in the days before he died.
Sherlock shook his head dismissively. “Blackmail’s a profession for those not overburdened with conscience. They don’t go to pieces over their victim’s demise from natural causes.”
“Maybe we missed something on the corpse, then, and he was killed some other way.”
“I didn’t miss anything.” Sherlock was staring intently at the back of the man’s head just visible over the back of the seat. John reckoned he must still be slouching down.
“Ok, try this. They took something from the room with the body and he’s worried that we, or someone else, will find it. We know they were there, and he does seem to be still trying to hide.”
Sherlock at least bothered to turn to look at him this time. “Slightly more plausible. But why isn’t Dirk worried?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know about it? Maybe he wasn’t even there? He could be just a hired guard with a clean conscience.”
There was a snort. “You go and talk to them.”
“About what?”
“Start with ticket prices,” Sherlock said cheerfully. “They already know who we are so you don’t need to embarrass yourself by trying to practice subterfuge. Tell them how much my ticket cost and take it from there.”
“Why am I doing this?” John protested, already getting to his feet.
“Because it’s too soon to ask the right questions and I can rely on you to ask the wrong ones.”
“Cheers for that. How will I know that I’m not asking a right one by accident?”
“I have full confidence in you. Off you go.”
* * * * * * * * *
This time it was the other one who came down the aisle and perched rather hesitantly on the seat across from Dirk. What was his name? John something. Or was it James? No, John. The sidekick. Dirk smiled at him with the bit of his mouth that didn’t have a strawberry fruit drop in it, realised the lopsided result must appear slightly patronising, decided that slightly patronising was probably a look he had a use for in future and he must remember how it was done, and went back to rolling the sweet thoughtfully around his mouth. The bus braked and his stomach turned slightly, not for the first time. Bus travel did not agree with him at all.
“Nine pounds each,” the man offered.
Dirk nodded. “Time of booking?”
He hesitated briefly. “Um. Half four?”
Dirk consulted the bit of paper Richard had returned to him. “You two were the last to book. Nine pounds, huh? What does your detective make of that?”
John shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I know. He hasn’t said anything about it.”
“Hah! It appears that the holistic method beats the deductive hands down!” Dirk would be the first to admit that he felt most definitely smug. Not that it was a competition, obviously, but if it had been he would be a good lap and a half ahead. Maybe two laps.
“What’s the holistic method, when it’s at home?” The note of scepticism was wearily familiar. Dirk spent a little time explaining how the interconnectedness of all things meant that the answer to any question potentially lay in the examination of any random item that the detective encountered, in this case, Megabus’s ticket prices.
“So now you claim to be a detective. Called Dirk. What was this question?” John enquired. The sceptical tone hadn’t noticeably reduced.
Dirk briefly considered telling him, decided against it. Sherlock Holmes was frequently engaged on what the papers were fond of calling “police work”. While Mr Canterbury had undoubtedly died of perfectly explicable causes Dirk suspected that leaving a dead body in a hotel room without notifying the relevant authorities, not to mention taking his bus ticket, was the sort of thing that the stiflingly bureaucratic police service looked definitely askance at. “That’s confidential to my client, I’m afraid.”
“And who is your client?”
“That’s also confidential.” Dirk was fairly sure that the man or woman he finally talked into paying for all this top notch holistic detective work would probably want their identity kept secret. He was merely anticipating their desires.
John rubbed his eyes a little wearily. “But the answer lies in the coach pricing system?”
“Absolutely.” He felt a little sorry for his floundering counterparts. He could afford to be slightly magnanimous. (Two lap lead, maybe two and a half.) “There have been thirteen paying customers on this bus. The total ticket sales came to eighty four pounds fifty. Including booking fees.”
John seemed to be waiting for him to go on. Painfully slow, painfully. The bus swerved to change lanes and Dirk felt slightly nauseous again. He closed his eyes again and felt a little better. “Your detective is a consulting one. Consult him about it. I now require solitude for deep cogitation.”
John stumbled up and staggered back. Dirk was a little surprised not to have Richard fussing at him but the steady breathing next to him suggested that MacDuff’s excessive and prolonged state of agitation had finally worn him out. The man was asleep.
Part 2