“And the account passwords.” He and Peter stared at each other.
“Is this important?” piped up the child, forgotten at his knee.
“This is very . . . important indeed.” He did not want to spell it out in front of Sarah, but for this kind of money there were people who would take a life—any number of lives—without hesitation.
“So we can give it to them? And get Mummy back?”
Marcus looked at Peter, then put his arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “Yes.”
“We have to give it to them, Sherlock.” There was a bitter humor in Peter’s voice. “But I think we should make a copy of it first.”
“It won’t show, will it? I wish we could make it just burn up, as soon as this thing is over.”
Peter frowned, his thoughts faraway. “What if we could make it self-destruct, one piece at a time?”
Marcus looked at him. “What are you thinking, Pe—Watson?” he corrected himself at the last minute.
“I can give it to my friend, who will know what to do with it. And he was telling me about a program for a self-destruct, say ten percent at a time, that can be triggered from a distance. When we do that, we stitch it back in Raffa, and give Raffa to them, in return for Maria Waterman. If they want to bargain, or double-cross us in any way, we have a tool to bargain back with. We’ll delete it.”
“Won’t your friend need the flash drive?”
“I’ll see if he can set it up just with the copy.”
“Good. Then get on with it. When you’re finished, Sarah and I will go back to the hotel and wait for them to contact us. Thank you, Pe . . . Watson.”
Peter gave him a wry look, but he said nothing more. He went to the telephone and spent a quarter of an hour speaking very quietly to someone he apparently knew well.
Meanwhile Marcus carefully put most of the stuffing back inside Raffa. One thing he had thought to do was save the thread with which he was originally stitched, or more accurately, with which the person had stitched him after the flash drive had been placed inside him. It was very close indeed to the original. Would they look closely enough to notice any difference? It was a linen thread, very strong. They might find which seam had been undone. He should unpick another seam, perhaps a long one, like his neck or leg, and use that to re-stitch the one they would look at.
He explained to Sarah what he was doing, and why, and she nodded again. Raffa was a stuffed toy, and yet he felt almost as if he were poking the needle into a live creature. He did it very carefully, mimicking exactly the depth and distance of the stitches already there.
“You won’t hurt him,” Sarah said gently. “He doesn’t feel, you know.” It was difficult for her to say. To her, Raffa was real.
“I know,” he answered her, raising his eyes from the stitching for a moment. “But I want it to be exactly like the seam they made, so they won’t see the difference.”
“Is that why you used the same thread? What about his neck? It will be different.”
“I’m hoping they won’t look at that so closely, at least to begin with. Later, they will know, because if they don’t give your mother back, we will delete . . . rub out . . . part of their flash drive every time they refuse. We just don’t want them to know that straight away.”
Peter’s computer finished the copying, and he took out the tiny slip of plastic and handed it to Marcus, who worked the little thing deep into Raffa’s insides. When the giraffe was sewn up again, and he looked exactly as he had before, Marcus said goodbye to Peter.
“You need to take the copy to your friend in . . . wherever he is . . . and let me know if it’s gone according to plan.” Marcus did not add any more. He wanted Sarah to believe it was all planned for, and safe—that Sherlock Holmes would never fail. It was Marcus St. Giles who needed Peter Cauliffe to know where he was, and have a backup, just in case.
Also it would be better if nothing appeared to have changed since the threat was made. Whoever it was who had taken Maria Waterman knew perfectly well that he was merely an actor who happened to have played the role of Holmes rather well, or at any rate, rather successfully—from somebody else’s script.
“We will go into the dining room and have afternoon tea,” he said as they walked through the foyer.
“I don’t want tea,” she replied.
“Neither do I,” he agreed. “But we should have it, nevertheless. We need them to know that we are here, and ready to do business. And I would very much rather be where lots of people can see us. It is safer.”
“Oh,” she said in a very small voice. She grasped onto his sleeve again.
“Do you like chocolate cake?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might. So do I. Not very good for you, but we need a treat, don’t you think?”