Poland had been an unmitigated disaster by every definition of the word, be it Webster, Oxford, Britannica, or some lost Aramaic text in a far-flung and forgotten corner of the planet.
Though he had been lured out to Warsaw with the promise of something interesting (”Dear Pan Holmes, will you please come solve this inexplicable murder for us”) that had turned out to be nothing more than a series of paltry parlour tricks.
(“Not a murder, but a suicide made to look like a murder,” he’d impatiently explained, pretending to check his watch. As if he didn’t already know what time it was. “The knife in his back is at an upward angle, meaning his attacker would have to be taller than him. Hard to do with a man of Pan Kowalski’s prodigious size. There are puddles there and there–water and water-diluted blood from where the body landed. There’s a chair knocked over here–not like the rest of the decor, doesn’t match, solid hardwood, very sturdy, very heavy, very hard to move. What does that tell you?”
There was a long moment of silence as the heads of Poland’s underworld exchanged looks, throats were cleared, and nobody met his gaze. Typical.
“Oh, for the love of–look at him! Shoes, patent leather, not new enough to retain the shine but still in good condition. No patches on the soles, new sinew lacings. But he has a new watch instead, tan line where the old one used to sit. Fingernails clean but not manicured, didn’t like the fussiness of it when he could do just as well on his own, and didn’t want the manicurist to see the tattoo on the base of his thumb–”
He crouched to lift the dead man’s limp hand between his finger and thumb, turning the corpse’s palm so the tiny inked insignia at the thumb would be visible.
“A known mark of his affiliations, and if she’d found out, he’d have to kill her and he wouldn’t have wanted to–”
“How do you know that?” one peroxide-blonde woman interjected, her accent thick. “He was as much a soldier as any of my husband’s men.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes theatrically and rose to his feet, pointing to the body’s suit. “There and there. Older suit, traces of cat hair, but well-tailored and sent out for dry-cleaning every…” He bent to sniff and straightened. “…three weeks at most. Shirt and tie, new. Cufflinks, old, probably a gift for service. Trousers, new. Pants–” Here he paused, his mouth twisting to the side as he looked at the unbroken line from the man’s hip to his mid-thigh. “–not his. Dull.”
“Not his?” came the predictable scandalised whispers.
“A soldier maybe, but not one inclined to making confrontations where he could avoid them by maintaining his fastidious habits. Obviously clothes he wore often, not something he would do his dirty work in, meaning he probably had very little of it. He wouldn’t have wanted to kill the figurative manicurist, no. Everything is well-maintained and what he couldn’t fix himself, he bought new. Nothing flashy or easily-identifiable, all sturdy and hard wearing though he could’ve afforded a designer brand with his pay cheque, but he was dedicated to his cause. So a conscientious man, a man of habit, a man of honour–or, I suppose, whatever passes for it here. Kowalski lived and died by his moral code. If you look at his left hand, you can see by the swelling where someone has worked off his wedding band post-mortem. So a suicide made to look like a murder and an oak chair–”
“It’s mahogany,” the mafia lord mumbled numbly. Sherlock threw his hands in the air.
“I don’t care if it’s papier-mache,” he shouted. “A dead man in one of his good suits with a knife in his back, water on the floor, a chair that doesn’t match any of your wife’s dining set because it comes from your personal office! What does that tell you?!”
The silence descended again, more sullen and sharp-edged this time.
“A suicide,” he repeated, “made to look like a murder. He’d discovered a secret, one that would ruin this organisation. So rather than be guilty for hiding the shame of it, he decided the more noble decision would be to take himself out of the equation in such a way that nobody could point fingers at anyone and the secret would go forgotten. Unfortunately for Pan Kowalski, however,” Sherlock turned and offered his rapt audience a facsimile of a smile, “he never counted on me.”
He circled Kowalski’s body once more.
“Elementary, really,” he mused. “A rival group’s signature knife style with the haft frozen into a block of ice. That chair,” he pointed to the mahogany piece, “he stood on it and threw himself off backwards so that his mass would shove the blade in. The ice would melt, there would be no fingerprints but his own, and a fascinating little murder mystery to distract you all from the fact that he discovered his wife was sleeping with the boss’s wife.”
“Brilliant!” He smiled to himself before blinking and schooling his expression back into what he assumed passed for bland pleasantry.
The silence immediately took on an air of shock as the two women in question froze and and went white-faced.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Sherlock demurred. “The boss was sleeping with him, so turnabout really is fair play.”
The first bullet nearly grazed his ear and he didn’t stay in place long enough to see where the second might land.
He spend the next twenty minutes weaving through the unfamiliar back alleys on Warsaw, climbing up fire escapes that he had never had the opportunity to test, flinging himself down stairwells with only a hope and a fumbled prayer that there would be another turn-off for him to escape through.
“Probably could have phrased that better, yeah?”
“Shut up, John,” he growled, clutching at a stitch in his side as he hid under a shadowy overpass. The car stalling overhead on the bridge crept forward in infuriating centimetres before building up to a roar and speeding away. Sherlock exhaled in relief and sank against the stone wall, breathing deeply.
Overall, a dull case and barely worth the price of the airfare. It was more than time, he thought, to get back to London.)
Two days later, back (in a sense) in London, he was staring out the window of a cab at the scenery (in a sense) lining the paveways of the M25. Mostly he couldn’t fathom why they were still on the M25 when they could’ve gotten onto the M4 ages ago. Irritated, and weighted down with an unfamiliar sensation–
(”Exhaustion,” his brain helpfully provided until he deleted the information in a fit of pique.)
He glanced at the driver through the divider.
Pakistani man, docile. Strong-willed, domineering wife at home who favoured salt too heavily in her cooking for him, but he loved her even when she yelled. Married around fifteen years ago, but he came to the UK before her and had to leave her in Pakistan by herself for a while. Afraid she never forgave him for it and lets her do anything she pleases now as penance. No children, another personal failing. A small menagerie of budgerigars that his wife pretends to hate, but he catches her doting on them when she thinks he can’t see. Jacket sleeves carefully hemmed by hand, so the wife gives him a hard time but loves him too. His hat’s sitting at an odd angle, out of line with where his hair is jutting out–where it would normally sit. Wife would usually correct it but didn’t tonight. Argument. He’s avoiding going home and taking his frustration out subtly on his customers by running up the meter.
Sherlock rapped his knuckles on the glass.
“She puts too much salt in because that smoking habit she never told you about is killing her taste buds,” he called.
He was summarily dumped at the next intersection. So much for docile. No tube station and three in the morning was a bad time to try to hail a cab off of…
“Oxford Road,” he muttered with a glare to the street sign. He dug his mobile out of his pocket and stared at it broodingly where notifications of missed calls and ignored texts from his arch-nemesis flashed at him.
“Nope,” he declared, popping the p and holding the mobile up to his ear.
“Lestrade. I need–yes, I am aware of the time, thank you. I need–well, it isn’t as if you tired her out. Oh, it’s hardly news, Graham–Greg, right, sorry. I need a ride.”
Sherlock studied the cracks in the pavement while Lestrade wound himself up for a lecture, as he was wont to do, before deflating and asking Sherlock where to meet him.
“Oxford Road. South Bucks, looks like.” He ignored Lestrade’s squawk of outrage as he hung up and sat atop his single suitcase and braced himself for a long half hour of boredom.
The ride into the heart of London was nearly as boring (”are you even listening, Sherlock?” “no, sorry, say something interesting, will you?”) and it was nearing half past five when Lestrade pulled into the deserted lane and idled his car outside of 221 Baker Street, looking torn between fondness and exasperation under the glow of the gaslamp.
“Please do spare me your sentimentalities, Lestrade.”
“Too right,” Lestrade agreed. “Welcome home, you tosser. Now get out of my car.”
