If the need had been urgent enough, I would have simply taken one.
“Miss Holmes,” the PC said, with exaggerated courtesy, opening the door to the hallway behind him. We followed him down to the CID. The desks were clustered together in fours, and most were empty, the computer monitors off, files safely tucked away. “DI Sadiq is in with a suspect, but she’ll see you shortly.”
“You shouldn’t read the Mail,” I told him. “It rots your brain.”
“Holmes,” Watson said. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re a mouthy little girl, aren’t you,” the PC said, and I perhaps would have said more, but Watson clamped his hand around my arm as the man left.
He sighed, plunking himself down. “Can you please not get us locked up? Especially in a place where it’s so very convenient for them to lock us up?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I remembered the taste of cartilage, and went temporarily mad.”
“Are you scaring off my constables?” asked a voice behind me.
“Your constables are too easily scared,” I said, and DI Sadiq laughed.
She wore the kind of viciously tailored suit that told me she’d been taken less than seriously before in her life and was done with that, thanks very much. It was several seasons old, a take on the 2015 Balmain blazer and slacks. (It behooved any good detective to follow fashion; a more readily classifiable means of self-presentation didn’t exist, except perhaps one’s grooming.) Her hair was in a perfect chignon; she had a pencil stuck through it for convenience’s sake, or because it softened her look an infinitesimal amount. She was early forties, give or take, had two piercings in her right ear, smile lines on the left side of her face, and she was reaching out to shake my hand.
I liked her immensely.
“Your sergeant asked me about the ears,” I told her. “This is Watson.”
“Jamie,” he said, standing. They shook. “I didn’t realize that anyone remembered that story.”
“The story about the teen sleuths who took down Lucien Moriarty?” DI Sadiq settled down behind her desk. “Everyone here remembers it. Especially that you’re a Holmes. You know, of course, that the Metropolitan Police’s crime database is named after your forebear?”
Watson didn’t, I could tell by his face. I fixed a smile on mine. “Home Office Large Major Enquiry System.”
“HOLMES,” Watson said, delighted.
DI Sadiq shrugged. “Proof is in the pudding. Anyway, we all followed the Moriarty case. It’s a good thing you’re here over lunch, or you might be signing autographs. Lucien was a big fish, you know. DI Green was happy to get her hands on that one. DCI Green, I should say.”
Detective Inspector Lea Green had, understandably, been promoted after Lucien Moriarty had been extradited home for his crimes. For now he’d been remanded, so he was languishing in prison until his trial at Old Bailey at the end of the summer.
I counted this exchange as the two minutes a day I allowed myself to think about Lucien Moriarty. I took a breath in, a breath out, and then I refocused my eyes on DI Sadiq.
She hadn’t missed my reaction. I watched her note it, then move on. “Lea and I took our detective exam around the same time. Stayed in touch, after; it isn’t easy being a woman on the force. She called a few months back to tell me she was passing along an informant, to give you whatever information you wanted, if you wanted it. I pulled the file you requested, but I’d like to hear why from you first.”
At that, Watson clicked his pen. He’d produced a notebook from somewhere and had it open on his knee.
“Within reason,” DI Sadiq said, eyeing Watson.
“I’m studying at St. Genesius this summer. As is Watson, here. There were a series of incidents at the Dramatics Society performance last summer—I’m not sure if you’re aware. Purposeful accidents. That sort of thing. Culminating in a girl named Matilda Wilkes disappearing.”
“I’m aware,” Sadiq said, and for a minute or so she didn’t say anything more. “Matilda—that was a high-profile case.”
“Missing white girl,” Watson said. “The media loves that.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Yes. The media does. But aside from the theoreticals, she’s a person. Not an idea. And she’s still missing.” Slowly, her shoulders relaxed. “I was assigned to her case. Not as the lead detective—I was assisting. Oftentimes, you think you have a kidnapped girl when what you have instead is a runaway, so I was looking into her family. It wasn’t any good, you know. We don’t know where she is. Is that your interest, Charlotte? Tracking down Matilda?”
I shook my head. “Not primarily.”
Sadiq nodded impassively, and there was something to her manner that suggested that I had failed her, so I hurried on. “The adviser for last year, Dr. Larkin, asked for our help now that all of last year’s players are back for the summer. I’m hoping to prevent further incidents from happening this summer. Think of it as a way of conserving police resources.”
“I see.”
She and I stared at each other.
“You’re just consulting for us, then.” DI Sadiq had a glimmer in her eye.
“Something like that.”
She unlocked her drawer and pulled out a file, then slid it across her desk. “Twenty minutes,” she said, not unkindly. “I need to get back to my investigation. He can take notes, but don’t photograph anything. And if you pick the locks on anyone’s desks while I’m gone . . .” She glanced meaningfully up at the camera in the corner of the room. I had clocked it when I’d walked in.
“That goddamn Daily Mail article,” I said. “Is it really my fault if people insist on buying the most basic locks—”
“Yes,” DI Sadiq said, and left.
She’d disappeared on a Thursday. It was more or less as we’d been told. On the night before Earnest’s opening, after their final dress rehearsal, she had gone out with a group of friends—Anwen, Theo, Rupert, and a boy named Sebastian Wallis—for a drink at a pub called The Bell and Book. They’d stayed out later than they intended, and it was one in the morning by the time Matilda made her way home. She would normally have walked with the other students back to their shared housing, but her parents were in town to see her performance the next night, and so she was staying with them at their hotel just outside the city center. She hadn’t taken a cab, despite the hour. She’d wanted to “walk off her two pints,” and the weather was still warm late that night.
It was, ultimately, a mistake.
There hadn’t been a CCTV camera on that final street she had turned down, Waterbury Lane. A brief bit of road, connecting two larger thoroughfares.
The next day, officers had canvassed the area, knocking on doors and asking if any residents had heard a commotion, a scuffle, anyone scream. Two different women, both with bedroom windows facing the street, had told police that they’d heard a heated argument. It had been brief and not particularly loud. They’d seen no reason to call the police. When played a sample of Matilda’s voice (from a video she’d posted to social media, her running a David Mamet monologue), neither could positively identify Matilda’s voice as one that they’d heard.