“Holmes,” I said. We were standing on the corner of Market and Greene, peering down the block at Bryony’s flat above the flower store. It was all very picturesque, with its painted window boxes and iron scrollwork. It didn’t look like the flat of someone who had killed a boy in cold blood. “Were you going to tell me why we’re here so early? Her interview at the station isn’t until ten, and it’s just eight now.”
“Bryony will be out the door by eight thirty, hair all done, looking like a starlet. She’ll stop by the Starbucks outside town. She’ll maybe go shopping. She thinks this is a routine set of questions, not an all-day event. Anyone who uses a vanity font on a death threat is far too confident to think they’re under suspicion.” She was almost bouncing on her heels. “I got into the police database this morning and got the make and model of her car. Registered to Bryony Downs, one black 2009 Toyota RAV4, license 223 APK. Or, that car right there.” It was parked on the street outside her flat. “In the meantime, we are going to sit very inconspicuously in the café here until she leaves, and if all goes well, we’ll have you to your ten-thirty appointment to collect your things, because those jeans are beginning to smell a bit ripe.”
I wasn’t sure I could survive cheerful Holmes any more than I could her junkie alter ego. All the same, I let her drag me by the arm into the café, where she set us up with two teas by the window.
It all happened as she’d predicted. Bryony emerged, in red lipstick and sunglasses like an old movie star. Holmes told me not to be so obvious, but I couldn’t help but stare at her as she drove past—that shining blond hair, the way she was singing along to the radio. I almost could have believed she wasn’t guilty, then, because it was clear the consequences of her actions hadn’t made the slightest impression. She’d put an innocent girl in the hospital. She’d taken Dobson’s life. Even someone as disgusting as Dobson deserved the chance to grow up and become a better person. Bryony Downs should be lying on her bathroom floor, racked with guilt, and instead she’d decided she was the star of her own romantic comedy.
Holmes held us back another ten minutes. “Patience is a virtue, Watson,” she said. “Besides, she might have forgotten something.”
When the coast remained clear, it only took us moments to get to the front door, leading up to both Bryony’s flat and the one above it. It was unlocked. As we crept up the steps, I said a quiet thank you for not having to pick her locked door right there on the street. When we reached it (#2, like the mailbox by her door, printed BRYONY DOWNS) I went down on one knee to inspect the lock. “It’s a Yale,” I said casually, “like the ones I practiced on with you. Do you think I could—”
With a disgusted sound, Holmes turned the knob.
“I see that you’re still scratching your locks,” she said to the man sitting there.
ten
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT.
The room in front of us was almost empty. As in, no tables, no sofas, no rugs, nails where pictures used to hang—empty. From where I stood, I had the clear view through a doorway to where two dark-suited men with Bluetooth earpieces were methodically sorting through boxes of breakfast cereal. One at a time, they opened them, dumped their contents in a bowl, and then tossed it all into a garbage bag. One of them actually whistled while he worked.
It was distinctly possible that I had dreamed myself into a surrealist film, or that Holmes was pulling some elaborate prank. I might have even believed it, too, if it wasn’t for the man sitting in front of us.
He, or one of his minions, had dragged a velvet tufted chair into the center of the bare room. But he wasn’t sitting on it the way you’d have expected. He didn’t cross his legs, or lean lazily into the wing of the chair, stretching out one arm to check the time on his admittedly very nice watch. Those poses wouldn’t have worked on him, anyway: the man was too much of a nerd. A handsome nerd, a very sleek, well-dressed nerd, but a nerd nonetheless. Instead, he sat at the edge of his ridiculous chair, tidily smoking a cigarette.
I sized him up: that was what he clearly wanted, presenting himself in the empty room like an art exhibit. Buddy Holly glasses, a sixties ad-man haircut—a hard side part, tapered at the sides—and from what I could tell, his suit was straight off Savile Row, where James Bond would get fitted for a bespoke jacket, if he were real. Holmes had said he was pudgy, but what I saw instead was a sort of softness from hours spent in front of a computer screen.
None of this would have been all that remarkable on its own. But written invisibly all over him, like white ink on white paper, was power. Electric power. The kind that snapped its fingers and brought a government to its knees. What had Holmes said? MI5? Google? Private security? How much of that was true? Drones, I thought uneasily. He controlled drones.
And I was the genius that had brought him here.