Part 5 The World’s Greatest Detectives
THE WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVES
ROBOT DELIVERY CART
He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson . . . He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.
– Sherlock Holmes, referring to
Professor James Moriarty in The Final Problem
Everyone headed back downstairs to the penthouse.
Longmuir and Hooper led the way, with Winnie Tan between them.
Winnie Tan confirmed what I’d suspected: earlier, downstairs, someone had grabbed her from behind and jabbed her in the neck with a needle. She’d blacked out immediately and woken up in the helicopter hanging off the roof.
I noticed the insurance guy, McCade, lingering awkwardly at the back of the group, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here. Ms Kimura looked the same; she just followed behind us all with a blank-eyed stare.
Director Longmuir caught up with the long-striding Mrs King who was still carrying her son. ‘Ma’am, for your safety, we should get you out of this building. One of my men is going to escort Ms Tan outside now. You can go with them—’
‘I am not going anywhere till you find my daughter!’ Yasmina King snapped back at him.
As we passed the mechanical floors, I quietly told Audrey, Heidi and Bill about the figure I’d seen there—briefly, fleetingly, behind a pillar—the one wearing white coveralls like the super-intendent had been wearing.
‘The superintendent who no-one can find anywhere,’ Audrey said. ‘Let’s take a look.’
The four of us did a quick circuit of the open-air floor, but found nothing.
No men in white coveralls.
The equipment cabinet was locked; so was the garbage chute’s hatch near the suspect pillar.
Finding nothing, we headed downstairs and rejoined the others in the vestibule on the 95th floor.
‘So what now?’ Director Longmuir said.
‘He’ll call again,’ I said. ‘And I imagine he’ll do it pretty soon. He’s still got Aristo King and the girl, Katya, which means he still has his biggest ransoms to demand.’
As if on cue, Longmuir’s phone rang.
It was him.
‘This has been fun, everybody, really it has. And I must say, being tens of millions of dollars richer does feel nice. Although, Insurance Guy, that was cold on the hundred mil.’
Quinn McCade bowed his head, swallowing, looking more than ever like he wanted to be invisible.
‘Anyhoo. You know what they say, you gotta strike while the iron’s hot, or, in my case, get your king’s ransom while you still hold him hostage.
‘So let’s get to the main event: the location of Mr King himself.
‘I’m not going to give you some cute riddle to find him. I mean, gosh, the world’s greatest detectives are here. Ask them where he is. They’ll also know the price for his release. But don’t forget, Mr King’s air is running out.’
Click.
The line went dead.
We—being the four allegedly greatest detectives still alive—all looked at each other.
The Tech Detect said what we were all thinking: ‘Us? How are we supposed to know where he is?’
‘And what the ransom for him will be?’ Xiao added.
‘Because it’s another riddle,’ Merritt Garrett said.
Special Agent Hooper said, ‘But the kidnapper said there’d be no more cute riddles . . .’
‘He’s toying with us,’ I said. ‘Like he’s been toying with us all day.
While we were dealing with Alexei and his bodyguard hanging from the elevator, he was downstairs attaching Ajax and Cassandra to the outside of the building.
Then, while we were occupied down there, he was killing everyone in the apartment and taking the two wives. ’
Hooper said, ‘So, what’s the riddle now?’
I said, ‘He told us to ask the world’s greatest detectives.’
I looked at Garrett, Xiao and the Tech Detect, and they looked at me.
‘It’s not us,’ I said. ‘He’s mocking us. It’s something else.’
It was the Tech Detect who got it.
‘Sherlock Holmes,’ he said firmly. ‘Sherlock Holmes is the world’s greatest detective. There was a Sherlock Holmes book on the shelf in the master bedroom.’
Moments later, we were back in the master bedroom, all of us gazing at Aristo King’s bookshelf, at the thick leather-bound volume on it titled The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
With its windows smashed by the gunfire from the drone earlier, the corner suite was now basically an open-air balcony. Wind whistled through it. The body of the dead FBI forensics guy was still there but thankfully it was now covered.
The Tech Detect nodded at the book. ‘Could it be booby-trapped?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Garrett said, peering closely at the hefty tome. ‘Doesn’t seem attached to anything—’
He pulled the book from the shelf.
We caught our collective breaths.
Nothing happened.
Then Garrett’s brow furrowed.
He gauged the weight of the book in his hands.
‘What’s wrong?’ Audrey asked.
‘This book’s too light . . .’ he said.
He opened the thick volume . . .
. . . to reveal that The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes had been hollowed out.
A rectangular void had been cut into its pages.
There were two things in that void.
A yellow Post-It note and a single pink pill.
Garrett extracted the Post-It and the pill.
‘What’s the note say?’ Hooper asked.
Garrett held it up for us all to see.
YOU WILL FIND MR KING
WITH MORE WORMS,
BETWEEN CARNEGIE AND CHRYSLER
‘Another riddle,’ Hooper growled. ‘He’s still fucking with us.’
I was staring at the pink pill.
‘Does that pill have any identifiers on it?’
Garrett handed it to me.
The pink pill had ‘5401’ imprinted on one side and ‘AMB5’ on the other.
‘It’s Ambien,’ Audrey said. ‘A sleeping pill.’
The Tech Detect checked online. ‘You’re right. The identifiers for a regular five-milligram pill of Ambien are: pink in colour, with “5401” on one side and “AMB5” on the other.’
‘So, what’s it mean?’ Director Longmuir asked. ‘Has he been using Ambien to knock out all his victims?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Ambien would take too long to take effect. And Winnie Tan said she was injected with something. No, he’s using something else. Some kind of drug that acts faster and which fully knocks out the victims.’
‘For the victims here, maybe,’ Hooper said. ‘But the kidnapper might’ve used Ambien on King, and right now, King is presum-ably at this location between Carnegie and Chrysler, whatever that is.’
‘“You’ll find him with more worms, between Carnegie and Chrysler” . . .’ Xiao read the Post-It aloud. ‘Carnegie Hall is only two blocks from here on 57th Street. And the Chrysler Building is down on 42nd. Is there somewhere in between the two of them that fits the reference to more worms . . .?’
A few of us brought up Google Maps on our phones.
Heidi said, ‘The Museum of Modern Art is between Carnegie Hall and the Chrysler Building. Maybe they’re having some kind of trendy art installation about worms . . .’
‘No! I think I got it!’ the Tech Detect said loudly. ‘St Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s also between Carnegie Hall and the Chrysler Building and right now, wait for it, it’s showing an exhibit of relics from Worms Cathedral in Germany.’
‘That’s it. Let’s hustle, people.’ Special Agent Hooper was already hurrying out of the bedroom.
Once again, I remained where I was, thinking.
Heidi and Bill, seeing me not move, remained at my side.
Audrey and Merritt Garrett had also started leaving with the others but when they saw me stay in the bedroom, they both paused in the short hallway leading out of it.
Up ahead of them, Special Agent Hooper saw us and stalked back.
‘You coming or what?’ he snorted.
‘What is it, Sam?’ Audrey said.
I was scanning the windy bedroom, my mind turning.
‘This answer doesn’t feel right. It’s not . . . complete.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Garrett asked.
‘Complete?’ Hooper said. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘It might be pointing to a decoy location, like the bomb on the 61st floor that killed Juno Everh—’
I cut myself off as I realised what was bothering me.
‘That’s it. Our kidnapper said, “The world’s greatest detectives are here. Ask them.” Detectives. Plural. We got this clue from only one great detective, Sherlock Holmes. I think there’s another clue that we still have to find . . .’
Hooper had had enough.
‘I don’t have time to indulge your weird quirky brilliance, you four-eyed freak.’—(125)—‘We’re going to the cathedral to rescue Aristo King. You’re either coming or you’re not.’
‘Then I’m not. You go get your glory,’ I said. ‘I think there’s more here.’
‘Whatever,’ Hooper grunted. ‘What about the rest of you brilliant private eyes?’
‘I’ll go with you,’ the Tech Detect said.
But the other two detectives—Xiao and Garrett—hesitated, glancing at me.
‘I think Dr Speedman’s right,’ Xiao said. ‘I’m going to stay here.’
‘Me, too,’ Garrett said.
‘Good. Fine. Stay.’ Hooper nodded at the two NYPD cops still here, the plain-clothed detective and the uniform: ‘You two, you got guard duty: keep watch over Mrs King and her son and this whole apartment; it’s still an active crime scene.’
‘You got it,’ the plain-clothed cop said.
Then Hooper left, dashing out.
No doubt eager to be on the scene when they found the world’s richest man, Director Longmuir hurried after him with the Tech Detect in tow.
Five minutes later, I was walking through the bloodstained and now near-empty apartment with Audrey and Heidi, looking for anything that might help answer the riddle: more books, an item of clothing, anything.
I even searched Mr King’s walk-in wardrobe to see if his rock-band t-shirts mentioned any kind of detectives or investigators.
(The two cops who had been left at the penthouse kept an eye on us. Yasmina King also lurked nearby, holding her son, not letting him out of her sight.)
‘I don’t think my ex likes you,’ Audrey said as we passed through the kitchen.
‘Even if I wasn’t dating you, I still think that’d be the case,’ I said. ‘Guys like him usually don’t care much for guys like me.’
I’d already checked the rest of the bookshelf in the bedroom, scanning it for books about other famous fictional detectives, like maybe Agatha Christie novels featuring Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, but I didn’t see any.