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

Once he’d followed her directions, Holmes found himself confronted with a tall blonde woman lounging on a chaise longue in her scanties. She was older than the other working girls he had encountered, still strikingly attractive, but obviously somewhere in her forties. She’d contrived to hide her age with extra applications of foundation, but her figure was more voluptuous than most of the others and there were obvious crows’ feet around the corners of her eyes. Holmes couldn’t help but wonder why she’d kept at this trade for so long. Perhaps she had no choice.

It turned out that being older made her rather wiser, though. She looked up at him through her windowpane, smiling reflexively into his face. But then her mouth dropped open with surprise – she had recognised him, maybe from the papers. A moment later, she was standing up. She went across to a hook on the back door of her room, took a silk robe from it and then pulled in on, knotting the belt at the waist.

It was a huge relief. Her expression had turned serious and concerned by the time that she was ushering him in.

“Mr Sherlock Holmes? I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,” she told him in a thick Dutch accent. “But what can I possibly do for you. You surely don’t—?”

“Of course not, my good woman.”

Unfortunately, when he showed her the six photographs, she, like the others, shook her head.

“None of them are regulars round here. But tell me, what are their professions?”

And when he explained who they were, she smiled wryly and nodded.

“It is just tourists and ordinary Joes who come here to the Red Light District. Prominent people such as these? They go elsewhere.”

“I take it that you mean to some luxurious bordello?”

There had been such establishments aplenty, after all, in Victorian London, and the great detective knew all too well of that particular trade.

“Yes, of course. They’re in precisely the same business that we are, but they dress it up a whole lot better and they charge a good deal more. Such places aren’t exactly legal here in Amsterdam, but they’re ignored.”

“And where would I find them?”

“All over the city, sir, even in the quietest suburbs.”

“Is there any way that they identify themselves?”

Roxie responded with a shrug. “They mostly look like ordinary houses. Most of them have adverts on the internet these days, but otherwise they get the majority of their clients through word of mouth.”

Which was not awfully useful, but he thanked her all the same.

One thing was for certain … he had come to the wrong place. Night was gathering fully around Sherlock Holmes as he headed out of the Red Light District, following the same path he had taken in so that he wound up back on Rokin.

It was one of the broadest avenues in all of central Amsterdam, terminating at its top end with Dam Square. The air was cooler than it had been in the daytime, and the sky could be seen clearly from this vantage point. The moon was coming up above the roofs, and Holmes could see that it was tinted red. A blood moon. Which surprised him greatly. There were various reasons for that aberration, none of which he could detect on this particular evening. Maybe the air above this city was more polluted than he had first believed, except he’d read in just this morning’s papers that the opposite was actually the case.

Across the way from him was a small Italian delicatessen, still open at this hour because it served coffee and cakes. There were no customers inside it at the moment, and so its proprietor – a thin man with an even thinner black moustache – was standing outside the front door smoking a cigarette. The man was gazing at the moon as well. Holmes went across and then engaged with him.

“The moon is red this evening, yes?”

“The moon has been red many evenings recently, signor.”

“In a continuous row?”

“Yes. It is very curious. My grandmamma, if she was still alive, she would call it a bad omen.”

“And how many nights precisely has it been this colour?”

The fellow blew smoke out, calculating the figure in his head.

“Almost for five weeks, I do believe.”

Which was the exact amount of time these awful cases of at first catatonia, and then mania, had been showing up. That was when it occurred to Holmes that the cause of this whole wretched nightmare might, not for the first time, turn out to be paranormal. But he kept his face relaxed.

“Mille grazie, signor,” he said.

The establishment that he was looking for … it could not possibly be within the boundaries of the Red Light District. He was absolutely sure of that. Each victim was a prominent and well-heeled individual, and would not risk his reputation by venturing there.

Which meant it had to be in the avenues above Rokin, not below it. For want of anything better to do, Holmes began to wander them, his sharp eyes going everywhere.

Except that they were mostly empty by this hour. There were few other late-night cafés, and few bars or restaurants that he could see, and so no reason to be here. Occasionally, a lone pedestrian would wander by, but Holmes found himself mostly on his own out on these streets.

And he so detested this way of working. Wandering these desolate sidewalks in the hope that something might show up? It was no more than a form of gambling, in which he trusted to luck and was not the least bit scientific. But he had no genuine clues to lead him to his goal, and so he kept it up.

A car door slammed at an intersection up ahead of him. A portly man had climbed out, and was now embracing a young woman who had emerged from the shadows. But he had a suitcase with him, and the car in question was a taxi with an airport pass. This was no more than a father who was visiting his grown-up daughter, and Holmes left them to it.

He passed the darkened entrance to an alleyway, and heard a girlish giggle from inside, then high-pitched voices. But an open window – brightly lit-up – overlooked the alley. It was only someone’s TV he was hearing.

An attractive woman in high heels went by him with a poodle on a leash. But were any of those things illegal? This was perfectly absurd.

Holmes raised his head to stare at the pink moon again. The rooftops were partially blocking it from where he stood, so that it appeared to him like a great bloodshot eye that might be spying on him covertly. Its reddish hue was even more pronounced than it had been when he had been standing on Rokin. So was he closer now to that which he sought? He wasn’t sure.

Another taxi drew up to the kerb a couple of blocks ahead. Two men got out this time, but they were both in silhouette. He could make out that they were not young, however, by the way they walked, the way their shoulders stooped. They said nothing to each other, made not the slightest sound, but a door swung open for them in a nearby building before drifting shut behind them.

By the time Holmes had reached it, they had disappeared. He looked up at the place, and could see nothing there out of the ordinary. This was no more than a townhouse that had been converted into separate flats, pot plants at the windows, framed prints and ornaments up against the walls beyond them. For heaven’s sake , he told himself crossly, I’m doing nothing more out here but wasting my shoe leather and my time!

He took an incurious glance at the row of nametags by the bell pushes to one side of the front door and then – nothing catching his attention – turned away.

But something was nagging at him by the time that he returned to his hotel. He wasn’t quite certain what it was but … he was missing something. There was something slightly odd that he had failed to spot. It infuriated Holmes in the manner of an itch he could not scratch. If he only had his violin to saw at, so he could gather his thoughts. Or better yet, a seven percent solution of cocaine.