Unprompted as usual, Sherlock asked, “What do you make of Captain Moran?”
Their flat on Baker Street had cooled marginally by the time they got home; John imagined steam rising off them as they sprawled across the sitting room furniture, recovering from their ordeal outside.
“Well, he’s SAS,” John replied, “so odds are he’s an alcoholic psychopath.”
“Remarkable,” Sherlock said with facetious enthusiasm. “Watson, I am continually impressed with your commitment to the most reductive possible assessment.”
“Right, well, maybe if you’d ever been in the field with these special forces blokes, you wouldn’t find it so reductive.” John rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: he went to Cambridge, he got those scars in a bar fight, and he’s shagging every woman from here to Southend-on-Sea.”
“Moran attended Oxford,” Sherlock replied. “The scars were clearly made by a large cat—a lion or a tiger, judging by the spacing. I’d need more precise measurements to be sure.”
“Of course.”
“And judging by the very thorough examination he gave you, I’d say Sebastian Moran is ardently attracted to men.”
“Ah,” John said, a little awkwardly. “I suppose I should be flattered. Surprised you noticed that, though.” His impression had long been that Sherlock held an equal-opportunity distaste for sexuality as a concept.
“It is an unfortunate consequence of my methods,” Sherlock grumbled, “that I am often granted a wealth of information on other people’s amorous activities.”
“You’re just jealous,” John teased. “I bet Moran wasn’t giving you any lingering looks.”
“Thankfully, he wasn’t.”
John eyed Sherlock for a moment. “What’s got you so worried about Moran, anyway? You think he’s involved?”
“I have insufficient facts to construct a theory,” Sherlock replied. There was a certain intensity to the statement, as if he were reminding himself more than anyone else. “Or perhaps too many facts, of too little significance.”
Once, not long after they’d first moved in together, John came across a paper Sherlock had printed off. Assuming it was for a case, John skimmed it; the paper was a study on the lived experience of psychosis. One of the early stages was described as the “heightened salience of meanings,” where previously irrelevant details suddenly took on new and vitally important significance. Eventually, all these details added up to a grand, delusional epiphany—a constructed reality, created by a mind struggling to make sense out of all the noise.
Sherlock had highlighted that bit. Every once in a while, John wondered why.
“There’s too much we don’t know,” Sherlock went on.
“Yeah,” John agreed, “like, why would anyone try to break into a place like BasePairing?”
“No, that part is quite clear,” Sherlock said. “BasePairing possesses a treasure trove of genetic data, although they’ve been slow to exploit it to its full potential. Probably why they’re going out of business.”
That was news. “They’re what?”
“BasePairing has undergone several rounds of redundancies,” Sherlock explained. “Cash flow problems—no need to get your DNA tested more than once, after all, so there’s no revenue from repeat customers. Now they’re auditing the company several months past the end of the fiscal year. The likeliest explanation is that they’re taking a full accounting of their assets in preparation for bankruptcy proceedings.”
“Leach didn’t act like any of that was going on,” John recalled. “I’m sure someone like Moran doesn’t come cheap—why would he spend so much money on security he won’t need for much longer?”
“I doubt Leach has been informed. BasePairing will file for bankruptcy in the United States, where they can be assured a more favourable judicial environment. Satellite offices like the one here in London will fall under the control of the company’s new owners—although I presume those new owners will strip the company for parts and sell off its assets.”
“Wait …” John began to see the shape of what Sherlock was describing. “Wait, ‘assets,’ like all those DNA tests BasePairing has on file?”
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I’m sure there’s no shortage of potential buyers. Insurance companies, credit agencies, law enforcement …”
“So millions of people’s DNA is about to be sold off to the highest bidder?”
“Almost certainly.”
Jay had spent most of the morning and afternoon rummaging through BasePairing’s computer network, using the flash drive Moran had planted as a foothold. He’d managed to pull together a fairly extensive breakdown of the company’s security system, as well as that of the building—which should give Moran everything he needed to break into the place.
It was evening by the time Jay arrived at Moran’s flat in Chelsea; things had cooled off a bit, but buildings as old as the ones in Moran’s neighbourhood were meant to keep heat in, not out. Moran kept most of his work equipment in the spare bedroom, and so Jay flattened himself onto the bed, watching as he put a bag together. Moran had elected to go shirtless, so at least it was a nice view.
“Is that a can of furniture polish?” Jay asked, half-muffled by the bedspread.
“It has silicone in it,” Moran explained. “Silicone absorbs sound waves. Good for motion sensors.” He tucked the can into his bag. “What do you have on the detective? Holmes?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” Jay muttered.
Moran looked surprised to hear that, and justifiably so. Jay had tried to access Sherlock Holmes’ mobile via Different Computing’s backup archive, only to find there was no account registered under the name. At first, Jay had assumed Holmes was among the minority who didn’t own a Different phone; it was only once he’d gone rummaging through John Watson’s backup that the actual problem came to light.
With utter disgust, Jay announced: “He uses a flip phone.”
Moran snorted a laugh, quickly stifled by a hand over his mouth.
“Anyway,” Jay went on, despite Moran’s suppressed mirth, “he and Watson are flatmates. Watson’s been doing a podcast for three years now, all about how brilliant he is.”
“Is he right?”
Jay made an indecisive noise. “Too early to say. Might be safest to assume he is, and avoid Holmes as much as possible.”
Moran rolled to his feet and opened the wardrobe, pulling down a hard plastic carrying case from the top shelf. “Why are we doing this, again?”
“Clay’s useful,” Jay said. “Especially if he owes you a favour. And men like Harry Nolan aren’t too forgiving of fuck-ups.”
Moran appeared content with that answer. He nodded and turned back to the bed, tucking the case into his bag.
Jay chewed uneasily at his lower lip; it hadn’t escaped him that Moran was risking more than getting his fingers broken. If he were caught actually stealing from one of his clients, that would be the death knell for his career—and the police would have one or two concerns, as well. The question slipped out, unbidden: “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you asked me to.”
The answer had come without hesitation; not a reproach, but a simple statement of fact. As if it were all the reason he’d ever need.
Jay pushed up off the bed and snagged Sebastian by the wrist, pulling him down into a kiss.
Sebastian let out a soft, surprised grunt and tumbled forward onto the bed. Jay laid back beneath him, coaxing Sebastian’s mouth open so he could slip his tongue inside, and Sebastian settled heavily over him, crushing him down into the bed.
Too hot for that. Jay gave him a shove, rolling him onto his back; Sebastian went easily, and Jay crawled over him, pausing briefly to lick the sweat from his abdomen before moving up to nuzzle into his neck.
A pleased moan rumbled under Jay’s lips—cresting into a sharp groan as Jay set his teeth at Sebastian’s throat, sucking a bruise into his skin. Sebastian squirmed briefly before he grabbed Jay by the shoulders, firmly shoving him away. Jay sprawled across the bed, laughing.
“Christ,” Sebastian muttered—not without amusement—as he heaved himself up off the bed and into the bathroom. He peered into the mirror, craning his neck to inspect the mark Jay had left; it was too high up to hide under his collar. “You’re a fucking menace.”
“Better get going.” Grinning, Jay nudged the bag with his foot. “You’ve got work to do.”
Sebastian had timed his return to BasePairing for roughly 2000 hours—late enough that most of the building’s workers had gone home, but early enough that his entry wouldn’t be overly suspicious.
Nevertheless, he was being followed.
He’d picked up his pursuer not long after he got off the train; just to be sure, he’d meandered a little through the tunnels of the tube station. A particular flash of tweed stayed in his periphery the whole while.
Turning a sharp corner, Sebastian sidled back against the wall and waited. After an appropriately cautious amount of time, Sherlock Holmes stepped into view—Watson, naturally, at his side.
“Captain Moran.” Holmes pretended surprise upon seeing him. “I was hoping to catch up with you.”
“I’m sure.” Sebastian hadn’t missed that Holmes’ gaze settled on his neck before darting away. “What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?”
“I was rather hoping to join you on your penetration test,” Holmes said, as if offering to join Sebastian on a turn about the park. “It is tonight, isn’t it? I would imagine you’d get on with it rather quickly, before any rumours have had a chance to leak out. And it’s key to my profession that I remain up-to-date on many different criminal methods.”
“Then I’d be happy to send you a copy of my report,” Sebastian fired back helpfully. “I’m afraid having you along would be a problem, though.”
“If you’re worried whether Leach would approve,” Holmes said, all innocence, “we could call him and ask.”
It was, in so many words, a threat to tattle to the boss. Sebastian resisted the urge to lift a hand to his ear; he’d left his earpiece at home, for the sake of maintaining his cover.
He wished he hadn’t. He wished Jay could tell him what to do.
He really wished Watson would get that recorder out of his face.
“He’s not coming,” Sebastian said, with a dismissive wave in Watson’s direction.
“What?” Watson bristled, clearly uneasy with the idea. Sebastian couldn’t blame him; he’d briefly considered the practicalities of knocking them both over the head and leaving them in a closet somewhere. “Of course I am.”
“One ride-along is inconvenient,” Sebastian said firmly. “Two is a botch job waiting to happen. Either Holmes comes alone, or both of you are staying here.”
Watson opened his mouth to protest, but Holmes got there first: “Agreed.”
It was two against one now; Watson relented with a sigh. “I’ll see you at home,” he said to Holmes. With a sidelong glare at Sebastian, he added, “Be careful.”
“Always,” Holmes replied, and followed Sebastian up through the tube station to the streets above.
They reached the plaza within a few minutes. Sebastian circled its outer perimeter, heading for the side door he’d exited through as he left this morning; it led directly into one of the building’s two main stairwells. While the door allowed entry via a key card, there was also a physical bypass lock.
“Act natural,” Sebastian told Holmes as they approached the door. “You’re just here to rent some office space.”
“You’re going to pick the lock?” Holmes asked, a little too loud considering how many people were still on the streets.
“No need.” There was a key box with a rotary lock mounted on the wall by the door. One of the building’s floors was currently vacant, and a lettings agency had been contracted to find a tenant for the space; the box had been installed for the sake of convenience. Sebastian palmed a shim from the set of lock picks in his pocket and wedged it down the side of the rotary lock’s first wheel, feeling for the catch as he rotated the wheel with his thumb.
“There’s a camera,” Holmes pointed out.
“I know.” From its current angle, the camera couldn’t see the shim in Sebastian’s hand; anyone watching the feed would assume he was opening the key box normally. It was a bit late for a real estate showing, but not unreasonably so—especially in this weather.
The shim caught on a notch in the wheel axis, marking an alignment point. Sebastian moved to the next wheel, and the next, until all the notches were aligned; then he rolled them all along as one until the box clicked open.
Inside was a set of keys: one for the stairwell door, and another for the vacant office suite. Sebastian plucked them from the box, unlocked the door, and led the way up to the fourth floor.
The overhead lights were off, the whole space so quiet that the background hum of the climate control system was the loudest thing to be heard. Sebastian crossed quickly to the suite’s main entrance, which opened out into a row of lifts.
“Won’t the lifts be locked down at this hour?” Holmes asked.
His tone was so chiding and superior that Sebastian felt compelled to correct him. “There’s a VIP bypass.” He gestured at the call panel with one hand while producing a key from his pocket with the other. “This is a Hatherley lift; they’re all keyed alike. Makes them easier to maintain.” The key in question had been bought from a locksmithing supply website for roughly five pounds.
Holmes didn’t seem surprised. That thought lingered as Sebastian inserted the key into the VIP slot, summoning the lift to their floor. The same key, used on the control panel inside, flipped the lift into independent service—allowing Sebastian to drive it down to BasePairing’s lab and cold storage vault in the basement.
There were no cameras on this level, as the building’s security staff didn’t have high enough authorisation to see what went on down here. A pair of secure doors blocked access from the corridor outside the lift to the lab area; getting through required both a key-card and an access code. Both doors were windowed; Sebastian made a show of peering through the glass, although the panic bars on the other side had been in the list of specs Jay put together for him.
Holmes had his eye on the keypad, clearly expecting Sebastian to try and bypass it somehow.
Sebastian opened his bag and pulled out a piece of rod stock, bent near the end at a ninety-degree angle. Slipping it through the thin gap between the doors, he angled it so the bent section rested against one of the doors’ panic bars. A swift, hard tug pushed the bar down, and with his free hand Sebastian hauled the door open.
This time, Holmes looked genuinely appalled.
“Fire safety,” Sebastian explained. “Panic bars always have to open the door from the inside, even if it’s locked from the outside.”
“I see,” Holmes said. Then he made to step blithely through the door, and Sebastian had to reach out and grab him.
“Motion sensor,” Sebastian hissed, pointing to where it was mounted above the door. They couldn’t cross the room without passing through its detection range.
That podcast of Watson’s had to be all hype.
Sebastian reached back into the bag and retrieved the can of furniture polish. Careful not to pass into the sensor’s arc, he aimed the nozzle of the can into its emitter and sprayed a thick layer of polish over it.
As they proceeded into the lab, Holmes asked, “What would you have done if it were an infrared sensor?”
The question was a little too clever, considering how the evening had gone so far. “Switched off the air conditioning,” Sebastian answered, and left it at that.
Row upon row of sterile, white work benches marked their progress through the lab as they made their way to its far end. There, a heavy steel vault door served as the entrance to BasePairing’s cold storage vault; it was fitted with another electronic keypad.
“What now?” Holmes wondered, oblivious once more. “Are you going to cut through the door?”
“It’ll be made to resist cutting.” Sebastian knelt to dig through the bag again. “Drilling, too, for that matter. We’d get through eventually, but it’d take hours. Days, maybe.” He withdrew the hard-sided carrying case. “Really, it’s a shame they put a digital lock on the thing.”
Nestled inside the case’s foam lining was a small, nearly featureless black box. Retrieving a screwdriver from the bag, Sebastian unscrewed the panel holding the keypad in place and removed it from the door entirely. He detached the wires that connected it to the lock and hooked the box up in its place.
A digital lock was just a small, simple computer. Its key code was stored in binary—ones and zeros—and loaded into memory as needed. And it took slightly more power to load a one than a zero; the difference between the two power levels could be read by a highly sensitive oscilloscope.
Such as the one inside the box.
Sebastian switched it on; a small screen on its face quickly paged through a series of status alerts as it read the key code, then played it back—masquerading as the lock’s own keypad.
Within a second, the lock beeped and the door’s bolts retracted. Sebastian pulled it open.
Holmes was watching him again, and there was a faint prickling at the back of Sebastian’s neck—one he couldn’t blame entirely on the rush of cold air from inside the vault.
Said vault was, essentially, a big walk-in fridge; claustrophobic rows of metal shelves ran from floor to ceiling, all lined with black plastic bins. Each bin was labelled with the range of serial numbers assigned to the samples inside it.
Sebastian wandered along the shelves, snapping photos with his phone as he checked the numbers on the bins.
“What are you doing?” Holmes called from the door.
“Documenting,” Sebastian called back. “I need proof we were able to get in here.”
Before long, he’d found the right bin. Each sample inside consisted of a small tube in a plastic case, labelled with a barcode, number, and name. Sebastian picked out a few of the samples in turn, ostensibly just to take photos—but, in the process, searching for the serial number Max Turnbull had provided.
As he lifted a sample near the back of the bin, he spotted the winning number on the sample behind it. The name on the label read, “Nolan, Harold William.”
A voice in Sebastian’s ear said, “Are we done, then?”
Sebastian just barely managed to suppress a flinch. Holmes moved more quietly than expected.
“Just about,” Sebastian replied, and hoped the strain in his voice could be blamed on the cold.
Holmes stood at Sebastian’s elbow; he showed no inclination to leave the vault first, regarding Sebastian with a sharp, studious interest that made him feel a bit like a pinned butterfly. It was hard to believe he’d blundered through nearly the entire test—
—because he hadn’t.
He’d been provoking Sebastian. Testing him. Would Sebastian have said as much as he did, if he weren’t so annoyed by all of Holmes’ stupid questions?
Holmes was standing too close not to notice Sebastian pocketing the sample. The cold, empty silence of the vault offered no distractions Sebastian could use to redirect his attention. Holmes’ head would crack like an egg on the sharp edge of the shelf, but that introduced more problems than it solved.
Sebastian’s stomach dropped. He snapped a photo of the sample in his hand, careful to get the label behind it in frame, and carefully set it back in its bin.
Chapter 4 of “The Illusive Consultant” will be published on December 8! If that’s too long to wait, you can also get the completed story as an ebook.
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