S3E2 - The Indigo Stain - Part Six: Smokescreen
Title: The Indigo Stain
Subtitle: Smokescreen
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,369
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: kidnapping, violence, language
John arrived at a building on Picton Street in Bristol that once was the home of Indigo Kendall Berwyn, also known as Elena Wilhelm-Glass. Sherlock hadn't considered calling ahead, so John had had a very uncomfortable phone call with one Jay Turner, who took over the rent when Miss Berwyn moved out. But he arranged a meeting with Anita Hernandez all the same.
Floor three, flat twenty-one. John knocked three times.
"Who's that?" a woman asked.
"My name is Doctor John Watson," he replied. "I spoke with Jay earlier on the phone."
"All right, hold on," she said.
Anita opened the door and waved John inside. She was fairly tall, about 1.75 m, and very skinny with a mop of dark, curly hair on her head.
"Hello," John said as he walked into the main room of the flat.
"I'm Anita," she said. "Jay said you were here about Kendall?"
"Yes, uh, I don't know if you knew this, but she went missing from her flat in London about a week ago," John said.
"Please sit," Anita offered. "Because I need to."
John took a dilapidated old armchair, and Anita dropped onto the couch.
"I'm sorry," John said. "I know it's a lot to take in, but the people I'm working with... they're the best. We really want to find, uh, Kendall."
"Right, so, how can I help? What can I do?"
John nodded. "Well, we know that Kendall took a month off to go to Salcombe, but we don't know why."
"She what?" Anita asked.
"She spent a month in Salcombe," John replied. "Didn't you know?"
"She had a bit of a health problem. Something about fluid collecting around her heart, or something, and she had to go to some big hospital to get rid of it."
"Pericardial effusion?" John asked. "Do you know what caused it?"
"She never said," Anita replied. "I assumed when a doctor called about it, it was... about her. Because she couldn't call."
"It's nothing like that," John said. "And I am a medical doctor, so I can assure you there are plenty of nonlethal, highly treatable causes of pericardial effusion. And owing to the amount of activity she had in Salcombe, I think it's safe to assume that she was better."
"That's... great," Anita said. "Except for her being missing now."
"Anything you can tell me about her could help," John said.
"Well, she was good at her job. A bit serious, you know, but she made a good flat mate. Before she left, when Jay took over her room, she packed up the rest of her stuff and stored it in the big cupboard in the kitchen."
"She didn't say anything about Salcombe?" John asked. "Or maybe the Grant Estate?"
"The what?"
"The Grant Estate."
"You sure that you're not here about Caroline?"
"Sorry?"
Anita swallowed hard. "When I moved in, I took over Caroline Kingsley's room. She lived here before me. We only met the one time, but she told me she got a job she couldn't refuse working as a kind of caretaker at the Grant Estate in Devon."
"What else did she tell you?" John asked.
"Nothing, really," Anita said. "But I remember Kendall not being too keen on it. She thought it was dodgy."
"She did?" John asked.
"Yeah, Caroline and Kendall were old school friends," Anita replied. "Trust me, I know. And I only lived with her for a little while."
"So she would look out for Caroline, right?" John asked. "Maybe she kept tabs on her? Touched base with her from time to time?"
"Sure, they talked on the phone," Anita said.
"You have a number?" John asked.
"I can get that for you," she replied. "I think that's packed into her extra boxes."
"Is there any chance I could get those from you? Have a look?" John asked.
"I suppose," Anita said. "You know, the police came around a week or so ago, and they haven't been back. Except you. And you don't have a badge, do you? No one else asked about Salcombe or anything at all. So... what's going on?"
"That's the thing, we don't know," John replied. "The police are convinced that her disappearance is linked to her work in London."
"But you're not."
"No, I'm not."
"Listen, Doctor," Anita said. "I didn't know her very well, but she was a good person. She cut me a break when I first moved in here. She didn't have to do that, and it's not like she had money, but she did it anyway. So, do me a favor, whoever you are, and find her."
"Yeah, sure," John replied.
Anita walked into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a few old cardboard boxes. They had clearly been used and reused for packing over and over again. Four boxes in total, all of them fairly small.
"This is all she left," Anita said.
John started opening the boxes, and something else occurred to him. "You know, we could use some photos of her, if you have any."
"What?"
"We have files on her, of course, but she was new at the Yard, so she still had that temp badge with no photo. A good picture could help us canvas for her."
"What about her photo from the Bristol district police station? She had an ID badge with a photo, I remember."
"Uh, that one didn't really look like her, you know?" John invented. "We were wondering if you had any that did."
"Of course," Anita replied. She left the room again.
John shifted through the pile of things Indigo Kendall Berwyn packed before she left Bristol. The first two boxes were filled with books. The third box had what looked to be winter clothing packed away, and the fourth box was filled with spare toiletries and utensils. As far as a trail goes, it didn't point him in any particular direction.
He turned to the boxes of books, all of which were paperback. Most were novels, but a few were nonfiction. All of them had well-worn spines. Clearly she loved these books. Then John saw it: a set of very small books bound together with rubber bands. They were notebooks, diaries. He tucked them into his coat pocket for later. They were on top of a schedule book.
Anita returned with a photograph of Kendall. "Here you are. This was when I first moved in."
John asked, "The police saw this?" He indicated the schedule.
Anita shrugged. "I dunno."
He opened the scheduler to the calendar pages and took photographs with his phone. He lingered over July of last year, and then he looked at the photo Anita handed him. Indigo Kendall Berywn had fair skin, blue eyes, and a rosy complexion. She looked nothing like Elena. It's possible she was wearing a disguise, but their facial structures were vastly different. Then again, John hadn't properly seen her for months, so maybe he was wrong.
"Anita, thank you," he said. "Once we know something, I'll give you a call, okay?"
"Thanks, Doctor Watson," she replied.
Mycroft wasn't telling him something. He knew it. Obviously, his brother omitted a great many things in their conversations, but this time he had purposely avoided some kind of inconvenient truth.
His phone rang. "Hello?"
"It's John."
"What did you discover?" Sherlock asked.
"Carolina Kingsley did move to Salcombe, Devon under dodgy circumstances," John replied. "Apparently, Kendall called her twice a week. I rang the number, and it was for the public phone at the Rollover Cafe."
"That's it?"
"I've got her notebooks," John replied. "But there're four of them and all out of order, I'm looking for them now in the car. I'll call if I find anything. Oh, and one more thing..."
"Yes?"
"Elena Wilhelm-Glass worked in London as PA to Thomas Fulmer, didn't she? But according to her scheduler, Kendall Berwyn was in Bristol working on cases and taking lessons on driving. I already called to check. She didn't miss one."
"So Wilhelm-Glass isn't the same person," Sherlock dismissed.
"But she is," John said. "You don't understand. I spoke with her on the phone."
"You spoke with one woman on the phone, there's no reason to assume - "
"Yes there is, you idiot!" John cut him off. "I'm telling you, she called me and knew all about the Fulmer case."
"Call me back later," Sherlock said. "When you've read the diaries."
Sherlock ran over the evidence again. Whatever happened here started with an incident with Old Man Grant, three months ago. Two months later, Indigo Kendall Berwyn showed up under strange circumstances. A month later, she moved to London, cleared the name of Sherlock Holmes, and was promptly kidnapped.
No, no, no! Sherlock walked that flat. The attack was complex and violent. No one could stage the evidence of an assault like that. But then again, he never met anyone who could thwart a plan of Moriarty from the inside, other than the man himself. She would have to be enormously clever in a way that he'd never known before.
The card she left in the cab... it wasn't handwritten. Anyone looking into Miss Berwyn's appearance wouldn't question such a small thing, of course. But why would someone imprint a stamp when it's so much easier to scribble a note? Certainly a woman who staged an assault that elaborate would be able to mimic another person's handwriting.
No, there was something else. Maybe the Engineer, or whoever she was, impersonated Indigo Kendall Berwyn for a week or so in London. After all, she was the perfect target: a forensic tech newly transferred to the Yard. She had a background, a history, and therefore had credibility, but no one knew her yet. It made sense that the Engineer would hone in on such a person, but only if she actually planned to clear Sherlock's name.
Why the hell would she do that?
No, she didn't stage the abduction. But maybe the kidnapper went in for the Engineer and didn't give a damn about who she was impersonating at the time. Yet a trail led back here, to Salcombe, where Indigo Kendall Berwyn left all sorts of traces.
It wasn't often Sherlock felt confusion; usually, it only occurred after a blow to the head. He didn't enjoy the experience in either case. The trouble was that he knew too much of the wrong thing. The Engineer versus Indigo Kendall Berwyn... they blended together, blurred the line, and destroyed his baseline.
Decision: The Engineer was the woman in London. She stole Indigo Kendall Berwyn's identity.
Decision: Indigo Kendall Berwyn, the real woman, was the individual in Salcombe, Devon. She followed after her flat mate, which made sense. The circumstances were dodgy, as John mentioned, and something went wrong. Maybe Caroline Kingsley didn't phone at the appropriate time, or maybe she sent some kind of distress message. Whatever the reason, the real Miss Berwyn came here.
Whoever the Engineer was, she needed an identity that couldn't be compromised. It would be catastrophic if the real Berwyn showed up at the Yard when the imposer was still on the grounds. So how did she know it was safe to utilize the identity? It made sense, proper sense, to use her name, but for a computer-savvy forensic technician, there were safer options available.
Sherlock wondered if the real Miss Berwyn ever left this place. He turned to the small bags of forensic evidence he found at the flat in London. Two of them were scraps of clothing with blood on them, one of them B+ and the other O-. It would take time to get appropriate identification back from the lab for DNA.
Two other bags had samples swabbed from...something. Sherlock analyze them and concluded they were taken from shoes or clothing or something that had been in the area of Northumberland County, given the pollen, deposits, and so on. But neither bag was marked, which made analysis difficult.
The last two bags were the simplest. One had a vial of chloroform, easily identified from the smell, and the other had an intra-muscular needle prepared for injection. Initially, Sherlock assumed that was a diabetic injection, but that would be highly unremarkable. The needle wasn't used yet, so no DNA could be collected from it, and of course, it wasn't labeled.
He ran an analysis on it and discovered it was azathioprine, an immunosuppressant. Mickey, the driver, said that the Grants brought doctors in and had treatment done in the house. Someone inside must have a fairly bad autoimmune disorder; normally oral medication was used.
So, the Miles family had an incident with Old Man Grant. They shut down the inner tours and closed off the northern part of the house. At the same time, they brought a young woman from Bristol, installed a dangerous security system that was clearly more to scare people off then apprehend them, and nobody asked anything about it. And someone in the Miles family had a severe autoimmune disorder.
Sherlock pulled up the family history. Old Man Grant, actually Jonathan Moore Grant, was considered the last true Grant. His children were David John Grant, Evelyn Trinity Grant, and Georgia Anna Grant. David and Evelyn grew up together, but Georgia was much younger and essentially an only child.
David died in the Gulf War never knowing his youngest sibling and widowing Miranda Tanya Grant. Eighteen years after his passing, Georgia moved away to live with her life partner, Amber Riley, who the family never accepted.
Thus, Old Man Grant, his daughter Evelyn, and her husband Trevor Adam Miles remained the only members of the Grant family that lived on the estate. They had one son, Edward, who married Alexandra Queen Fanning, who moved into the mansion five years ago.
Edward and Alexandra were now both in their thirties. Edward's activities remained unremarkable, but Alexandra had quit her job about a year ago, despite immense success as an attorney, without giving any reason. Sherlock knew that many people wanted children, so perhaps she left her job for that reason.
"Damn it," he said out loud. He dialed up John.
"Sherlock?"
"When will you be back?"
<<< Previous Part:
Part Five: Haunted
Next Part: >>>
Part Seven: Rollover Cafe
The Indigo Stain - Series 3, Episode 2 - Primary Post
Subtitle: Smokescreen
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,369
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: kidnapping, violence, language
John arrived at a building on Picton Street in Bristol that once was the home of Indigo Kendall Berwyn, also known as Elena Wilhelm-Glass. Sherlock hadn't considered calling ahead, so John had had a very uncomfortable phone call with one Jay Turner, who took over the rent when Miss Berwyn moved out. But he arranged a meeting with Anita Hernandez all the same.
Floor three, flat twenty-one. John knocked three times.
"Who's that?" a woman asked.
"My name is Doctor John Watson," he replied. "I spoke with Jay earlier on the phone."
"All right, hold on," she said.
Anita opened the door and waved John inside. She was fairly tall, about 1.75 m, and very skinny with a mop of dark, curly hair on her head.
"Hello," John said as he walked into the main room of the flat.
"I'm Anita," she said. "Jay said you were here about Kendall?"
"Yes, uh, I don't know if you knew this, but she went missing from her flat in London about a week ago," John said.
"Please sit," Anita offered. "Because I need to."
John took a dilapidated old armchair, and Anita dropped onto the couch.
"I'm sorry," John said. "I know it's a lot to take in, but the people I'm working with... they're the best. We really want to find, uh, Kendall."
"Right, so, how can I help? What can I do?"
John nodded. "Well, we know that Kendall took a month off to go to Salcombe, but we don't know why."
"She what?" Anita asked.
"She spent a month in Salcombe," John replied. "Didn't you know?"
"She had a bit of a health problem. Something about fluid collecting around her heart, or something, and she had to go to some big hospital to get rid of it."
"Pericardial effusion?" John asked. "Do you know what caused it?"
"She never said," Anita replied. "I assumed when a doctor called about it, it was... about her. Because she couldn't call."
"It's nothing like that," John said. "And I am a medical doctor, so I can assure you there are plenty of nonlethal, highly treatable causes of pericardial effusion. And owing to the amount of activity she had in Salcombe, I think it's safe to assume that she was better."
"That's... great," Anita said. "Except for her being missing now."
"Anything you can tell me about her could help," John said.
"Well, she was good at her job. A bit serious, you know, but she made a good flat mate. Before she left, when Jay took over her room, she packed up the rest of her stuff and stored it in the big cupboard in the kitchen."
"She didn't say anything about Salcombe?" John asked. "Or maybe the Grant Estate?"
"The what?"
"The Grant Estate."
"You sure that you're not here about Caroline?"
"Sorry?"
Anita swallowed hard. "When I moved in, I took over Caroline Kingsley's room. She lived here before me. We only met the one time, but she told me she got a job she couldn't refuse working as a kind of caretaker at the Grant Estate in Devon."
"What else did she tell you?" John asked.
"Nothing, really," Anita said. "But I remember Kendall not being too keen on it. She thought it was dodgy."
"She did?" John asked.
"Yeah, Caroline and Kendall were old school friends," Anita replied. "Trust me, I know. And I only lived with her for a little while."
"So she would look out for Caroline, right?" John asked. "Maybe she kept tabs on her? Touched base with her from time to time?"
"Sure, they talked on the phone," Anita said.
"You have a number?" John asked.
"I can get that for you," she replied. "I think that's packed into her extra boxes."
"Is there any chance I could get those from you? Have a look?" John asked.
"I suppose," Anita said. "You know, the police came around a week or so ago, and they haven't been back. Except you. And you don't have a badge, do you? No one else asked about Salcombe or anything at all. So... what's going on?"
"That's the thing, we don't know," John replied. "The police are convinced that her disappearance is linked to her work in London."
"But you're not."
"No, I'm not."
"Listen, Doctor," Anita said. "I didn't know her very well, but she was a good person. She cut me a break when I first moved in here. She didn't have to do that, and it's not like she had money, but she did it anyway. So, do me a favor, whoever you are, and find her."
"Yeah, sure," John replied.
Anita walked into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a few old cardboard boxes. They had clearly been used and reused for packing over and over again. Four boxes in total, all of them fairly small.
"This is all she left," Anita said.
John started opening the boxes, and something else occurred to him. "You know, we could use some photos of her, if you have any."
"What?"
"We have files on her, of course, but she was new at the Yard, so she still had that temp badge with no photo. A good picture could help us canvas for her."
"What about her photo from the Bristol district police station? She had an ID badge with a photo, I remember."
"Uh, that one didn't really look like her, you know?" John invented. "We were wondering if you had any that did."
"Of course," Anita replied. She left the room again.
John shifted through the pile of things Indigo Kendall Berwyn packed before she left Bristol. The first two boxes were filled with books. The third box had what looked to be winter clothing packed away, and the fourth box was filled with spare toiletries and utensils. As far as a trail goes, it didn't point him in any particular direction.
He turned to the boxes of books, all of which were paperback. Most were novels, but a few were nonfiction. All of them had well-worn spines. Clearly she loved these books. Then John saw it: a set of very small books bound together with rubber bands. They were notebooks, diaries. He tucked them into his coat pocket for later. They were on top of a schedule book.
Anita returned with a photograph of Kendall. "Here you are. This was when I first moved in."
John asked, "The police saw this?" He indicated the schedule.
Anita shrugged. "I dunno."
He opened the scheduler to the calendar pages and took photographs with his phone. He lingered over July of last year, and then he looked at the photo Anita handed him. Indigo Kendall Berywn had fair skin, blue eyes, and a rosy complexion. She looked nothing like Elena. It's possible she was wearing a disguise, but their facial structures were vastly different. Then again, John hadn't properly seen her for months, so maybe he was wrong.
"Anita, thank you," he said. "Once we know something, I'll give you a call, okay?"
"Thanks, Doctor Watson," she replied.
Mycroft wasn't telling him something. He knew it. Obviously, his brother omitted a great many things in their conversations, but this time he had purposely avoided some kind of inconvenient truth.
His phone rang. "Hello?"
"It's John."
"What did you discover?" Sherlock asked.
"Carolina Kingsley did move to Salcombe, Devon under dodgy circumstances," John replied. "Apparently, Kendall called her twice a week. I rang the number, and it was for the public phone at the Rollover Cafe."
"That's it?"
"I've got her notebooks," John replied. "But there're four of them and all out of order, I'm looking for them now in the car. I'll call if I find anything. Oh, and one more thing..."
"Yes?"
"Elena Wilhelm-Glass worked in London as PA to Thomas Fulmer, didn't she? But according to her scheduler, Kendall Berwyn was in Bristol working on cases and taking lessons on driving. I already called to check. She didn't miss one."
"So Wilhelm-Glass isn't the same person," Sherlock dismissed.
"But she is," John said. "You don't understand. I spoke with her on the phone."
"You spoke with one woman on the phone, there's no reason to assume - "
"Yes there is, you idiot!" John cut him off. "I'm telling you, she called me and knew all about the Fulmer case."
"Call me back later," Sherlock said. "When you've read the diaries."
Sherlock ran over the evidence again. Whatever happened here started with an incident with Old Man Grant, three months ago. Two months later, Indigo Kendall Berwyn showed up under strange circumstances. A month later, she moved to London, cleared the name of Sherlock Holmes, and was promptly kidnapped.
No, no, no! Sherlock walked that flat. The attack was complex and violent. No one could stage the evidence of an assault like that. But then again, he never met anyone who could thwart a plan of Moriarty from the inside, other than the man himself. She would have to be enormously clever in a way that he'd never known before.
The card she left in the cab... it wasn't handwritten. Anyone looking into Miss Berwyn's appearance wouldn't question such a small thing, of course. But why would someone imprint a stamp when it's so much easier to scribble a note? Certainly a woman who staged an assault that elaborate would be able to mimic another person's handwriting.
No, there was something else. Maybe the Engineer, or whoever she was, impersonated Indigo Kendall Berwyn for a week or so in London. After all, she was the perfect target: a forensic tech newly transferred to the Yard. She had a background, a history, and therefore had credibility, but no one knew her yet. It made sense that the Engineer would hone in on such a person, but only if she actually planned to clear Sherlock's name.
Why the hell would she do that?
No, she didn't stage the abduction. But maybe the kidnapper went in for the Engineer and didn't give a damn about who she was impersonating at the time. Yet a trail led back here, to Salcombe, where Indigo Kendall Berwyn left all sorts of traces.
It wasn't often Sherlock felt confusion; usually, it only occurred after a blow to the head. He didn't enjoy the experience in either case. The trouble was that he knew too much of the wrong thing. The Engineer versus Indigo Kendall Berwyn... they blended together, blurred the line, and destroyed his baseline.
Decision: The Engineer was the woman in London. She stole Indigo Kendall Berwyn's identity.
Decision: Indigo Kendall Berwyn, the real woman, was the individual in Salcombe, Devon. She followed after her flat mate, which made sense. The circumstances were dodgy, as John mentioned, and something went wrong. Maybe Caroline Kingsley didn't phone at the appropriate time, or maybe she sent some kind of distress message. Whatever the reason, the real Miss Berwyn came here.
Whoever the Engineer was, she needed an identity that couldn't be compromised. It would be catastrophic if the real Berwyn showed up at the Yard when the imposer was still on the grounds. So how did she know it was safe to utilize the identity? It made sense, proper sense, to use her name, but for a computer-savvy forensic technician, there were safer options available.
Sherlock wondered if the real Miss Berwyn ever left this place. He turned to the small bags of forensic evidence he found at the flat in London. Two of them were scraps of clothing with blood on them, one of them B+ and the other O-. It would take time to get appropriate identification back from the lab for DNA.
Two other bags had samples swabbed from...something. Sherlock analyze them and concluded they were taken from shoes or clothing or something that had been in the area of Northumberland County, given the pollen, deposits, and so on. But neither bag was marked, which made analysis difficult.
The last two bags were the simplest. One had a vial of chloroform, easily identified from the smell, and the other had an intra-muscular needle prepared for injection. Initially, Sherlock assumed that was a diabetic injection, but that would be highly unremarkable. The needle wasn't used yet, so no DNA could be collected from it, and of course, it wasn't labeled.
He ran an analysis on it and discovered it was azathioprine, an immunosuppressant. Mickey, the driver, said that the Grants brought doctors in and had treatment done in the house. Someone inside must have a fairly bad autoimmune disorder; normally oral medication was used.
So, the Miles family had an incident with Old Man Grant. They shut down the inner tours and closed off the northern part of the house. At the same time, they brought a young woman from Bristol, installed a dangerous security system that was clearly more to scare people off then apprehend them, and nobody asked anything about it. And someone in the Miles family had a severe autoimmune disorder.
Sherlock pulled up the family history. Old Man Grant, actually Jonathan Moore Grant, was considered the last true Grant. His children were David John Grant, Evelyn Trinity Grant, and Georgia Anna Grant. David and Evelyn grew up together, but Georgia was much younger and essentially an only child.
David died in the Gulf War never knowing his youngest sibling and widowing Miranda Tanya Grant. Eighteen years after his passing, Georgia moved away to live with her life partner, Amber Riley, who the family never accepted.
Thus, Old Man Grant, his daughter Evelyn, and her husband Trevor Adam Miles remained the only members of the Grant family that lived on the estate. They had one son, Edward, who married Alexandra Queen Fanning, who moved into the mansion five years ago.
Edward and Alexandra were now both in their thirties. Edward's activities remained unremarkable, but Alexandra had quit her job about a year ago, despite immense success as an attorney, without giving any reason. Sherlock knew that many people wanted children, so perhaps she left her job for that reason.
"Damn it," he said out loud. He dialed up John.
"Sherlock?"
"When will you be back?"
<<< Previous Part:
Part Five: Haunted
Next Part: >>>
Part Seven: Rollover Cafe
The Indigo Stain - Series 3, Episode 2 - Primary Post