Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

That shocked Williams so profoundly that he fell completely silent.

A while later, there was a faint glimmer of yellow at the far horizon. It expanded till the surface of the sea ahead of them was filled with flecks of gold. Holmes looked around him as the light increased, and took in the fact that this was the most beautiful bay he’d ever come across. The sand was so white it was almost platinum, and utterly unblemished. There were long masses of creeping plants on sections of the cliffs that they had climbed down, and flowers of wondrous hues were on them, opening to greet the rising sun. He could even make out, at the far end of the strand, a little waterfall emerging from the higher rocks and sparkling like crystal.

Small birds began to wheel above them as the air increased in warmth. And a huge tropical butterfly went past, its wings containing all the colours of the rainbow.

“Not long now,” Papa John murmured, moving up closer and grinning with satisfaction.

And then the sun was pushing up above the Caribbean waves, a great overturned golden bowl, the gentler pre-dawn warmth retreating before the full heat of the coming day. Holmes felt the sunlight wash across his body. And was forced once again, for a brief moment, to close his eyes.

He thought he heard a distant laugh.

When he looked around, he could see pale figures emerging from the thin air just in front of the cliff-face.

Nine figures. Four men and five women, all of them in scanty swimsuits. None of them was what you’d call particularly substantial – you could see right through them, since their bodies were like living smoke. But they were grinning hugely, and began cavorting as soon as they had emerged. One of the men performed a cartwheel on the sand, and several of the women giggled and applauded.

And then Meg appeared, dressed in a bikini, an enormously delighted smile on her thin face. She started running, going past the others, down into the water, where she shrieked with wild abandonment.

She made not the slightest splash or ripple. And had left no footprints on the shore.

But this was what she’d wanted. So Holmes pondered it a while, and then decided he was happy for her.

The corpse had been lying at the centre of the park most of the night, and had only been discovered come the rise of dawn. A gardener had come across it. It was lying in the same position where it had been found, sprawled out on the neatly trimmed sward like a squashed insect at the middle of the green baize of a snooker table.

The area had been taped off. Crowds had gathered beyond the barriers, uniformed men holding them back.

The city’s top detectives – and their famous guest – paced around the body while forensics people worked.

“Do you suppose that this could be,” Inspector Penchit suggested, “the work of some gigantic hound?”

“Good Lord, I do hope not,” muttered Holmes. “I’ve had enough of those to last me several lifetimes.”

Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia’s capital – boiled around them in the stewing heat. This might be one of the most humid cities on the face of this planet, but it was also one of the most vibrant. It was a boomtown, driven by oil and financial institutions. Here in the middle – and this was Kuala Lumpur Central Park – skyscrapers were springing up like mushrooms on a balmy night. Most of them were office blocks, but some of them were homes – ‘56 new apartments’, a nearby billboard announced proudly beside one such a half-built structure, ‘57 swimming pools’.

This was where the new rich were carving their fortunes. An entire Far Eastern young upwardly mobile class was coming into being. Traffic thrummed across the elevated freeways and the sidewalks and the malls were thronged.

This was also one of the most genuinely multicultural venues to be found anywhere, and had been so for centuries. There were dozens of nationalities living here; Christians and Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists all rubbed shoulders amicably. Everywhere that you went, there were churches, mosques and temples.

An example to us all , Holmes thought. And then he returned his attention to the corpse in question.

It was a young Chinese fellow, barely in his twenties. He had been formally dressed for work, but was now in his shirtsleeves, the jacket of his business suit lying a few yards away. Which suggested that he had recently completed his labours when he’d emerged, and yanked the jacket off. Then dropped it in the course of the pursuit which had terminated with the ending of his life.

Whatever had come down on him, it had been moving fast or else had taken him by surprise. Otherwise, there would be more than a few yards between corpse and jacket.

And it did not look like he had been attacked by any dog. There were heavy rows of tooth marks around his neck, for sure, the fellow’s blood coagulating in them. But they were all shallow, none of the wounds suggesting something canine. If anything, the man looked as if he’d been gone at with a pair of blunted hacksaws.

For one gruesome final detail, his neck had been snapped.

“Background information, if you please?” Holmes asked.

Inspector Penchit – in his fifties, grey-haired and with spectacles – looked perturbed for a moment, then figured out what was being required of him.

“His name is Cedric Lam,” he told the great detective. “He is from Taiwan originally. Twenty-two, unmarried. He worked for an international bank, over there.”

And he pointed to the building that was obviously the wonder of this entire city. And one of the wonders of the entire modern world: the Petronas Towers, at the north-western end of the park – two of them, a full one thousand, four hundred and eighty three feet tall, all glass and silvery metal, tapering to Arabic-style crenellated turrets at their peaks. It would have been enough in itself, but that was not all. Between the pair of upright structures was a kind of crossbar called ‘the skybridge’, a covered passageway joining them both, so that the entire double building formed a massive ‘H’ against the sky. What kept it up? Holmes had wondered when he had first seen it. Ah, the engineering miracles of this modern age beat even the achievements of his own.

“He was working late, as is the custom of such institutions,” Penchit was continuing. “He finished about ten o’clock. We have witnesses, the building’s doormen, who saw him leave, and video footage. And that was the last that we know of him … alive.”

“He was going home?” Holmes asked.

“He would have had to cross the park to do so. So, yes, we believe that is the case.”

Holmes held it in his mind’s eye for a moment. The young, ambitious fellow, grateful that another day’s hard toil was at its end. Stepping out into the open air and pulling off his jacket. Mopping at his brow perhaps, before heading away toward his apartment.

And then … this awful thing descending on him, finishing a life that had barely begun its adult phase. Holmes felt indignation boiling up in him. This had to be stopped, before it happened again.

All of this, however, was internal. He showed not a fragment of it to his colleagues around him, maintaining instead his calm, lofty demeanour.

“Is the man’s employer here?” was his next question.

A Muslim in a very smart black suit stepped forwards, introducing himself as Mr Inmarahan of the Global Oriental Bank. He was in his late forties, had a wide salt-and-pepper moustache, and handed Holmes a business card, which the detective placed in his back pocket without looking at.

“It’s a great honour to meet you, sir. Fame of your achievements is worldwide.”