The Syndicate

I volunteered.


SHERLOCK: I’m not your sniffer dog.
LESTRADE: No, Anderson’s my sniffer dog.
(He nods towards the kitchen.)
SHERLOCK: What, An...
(The closed doors to the kitchen slide open and reveal several more officers in there searching through the room. Anderson turns towards the living room and raises his hand in sarcastic greeting.)
SHERLOCK (angrily): Anderson, what are you doing here on a drugs bust?
ANDERSON (venomously): Oh, I volunteered.
(Sherlock turns away, biting his lip angrily.)
LESTRADE: They all did. They’re not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, but they’re very keen.
(Donovan comes into view from the kitchen, holding a small glass jar with some white round objects in it.)
DONOVAN: Are these human eyes?
SHERLOCK: Put those back!
DONOVAN: They were in the microwave!
SHERLOCK: It’s an experiment.
LESTRADE: Keep looking, guys.
(He stands up and turns to Sherlock.)
LESTRADE: Or you could help us properly and I’ll stand them down.
SHERLOCK (pacing angrily): This is childish.
LESTRADE: Well, I’m dealing with a child. Sherlock, this is our case. I’m letting you in, but you do not go off on your own. Clear?
SHERLOCK (stopping and glaring at him): Oh, what, so-so-so you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?
LESTRADE: It stops being pretend if they find anything.
SHERLOCK (loudly): I am clean!
LESTRADE: Is your flat? All of it?
SHERLOCK: I don’t even smoke.
(He unbuttons the cuff of his left shirt and pulls it up to show the nicotine patch on his lower arm.)
LESTRADE: Neither do I.
(He pulls up the right sleeve of his own shirt to show a similar patch on his arm. Sherlock rolls his eyes and turns away and they both pull their sleeves back down again.)
LESTRADE: So let’s work together. We’ve found Rachel.
SHERLOCK (turning back to him): Who is she?
LESTRADE: Jennifer Wilson’s only daughter.
SHERLOCK (frowning): Her daughter? Why would she write her daughter’s name? Why?
ANDERSON: Never mind that. We found the case.
(He points to the pink suitcase in the living room.)
ANDERSON: According to someone, the murderer has the case, and we found it in the hands of our favorite psychopath.
SHERLOCK (looking at him disparagingly): I’m not a psychopath, Anderson. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.
(He turns back to Lestrade.)
SHERLOCK: You need to bring Rachel in. You need to question her. I need to question her.
LESTRADE: She’s dead.
SHERLOCK: Excellent!
(John looks startled at this.)
SHERLOCK (to Lestrade): How, when and why? Is there a connection? There has to be.
LESTRADE: Well, I doubt it, since she’s been dead for fourteen years. Technically she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson’s stillborn daughter, fourteen years ago.
(John grimaces sadly and turns away. Sherlock, on the other hand, just looks confused.)
SHERLOCK: No, that’s ... that’s not right. How ... Why would she do that? Why?
ANDERSON: Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments?(!) Yup – sociopath; I’m seeing it now.
SHERLOCK (turning to him with an exasperated look on his face): She didn’t think about her daughter. She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort. It would have hurt.
(He begins to pace back and forth across the room again.)
JOHN: You said that the victims all took the poison themselves, that he makes them take it. Well, maybe he ... I don’t know, talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow.
SHERLOCK (stopping and turning to him): Yeah, but that was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?
(John stares at him. Sherlock hesitates as he realises that everyone in the flat has stopped what they’re doing and has fallen silent. He glances around the room and then looks awkwardly at John.)
SHERLOCK: Not good?
JOHN (also glancing around at the others before turning back to Sherlock): Bit not good, yeah.
(Sherlock shakes it off and steps closer to John, looking at him intently.)
SHERLOCK: Yeah, but if you were dying ... if you’d been murdered: in your very last few seconds what would you say?
JOHN: “Please, God, let me live.”
SHERLOCK (exasperated): Oh, use your imagination!
JOHN: I don’t have to.
(Sherlock seems to recognize the look of pain in John’s face. He pauses momentarily and blinks a couple of times, shifting his feet apologetically before continuing.)
SHERLOCK: Yeah, but if you were clever, really clever ... Jennifer Wilson running all those lovers: she was clever.
(He starts to pace again.)
SHERLOCK: She’s trying to tell us something.
(Mrs Hudson comes to the door of the living room.)
MRS HUDSON: Isn’t the doorbell working? Your taxi’s here, Sherlock.
SHERLOCK: I didn’t order a taxi. Go away.
(He continues pacing as Mrs Hudson looks around the room.)
MRS HUDSON: Oh, dear. They’re making such a mess. What are they looking for?
JOHN: It’s a drugs bust, Mrs Hudson.
MRS HUDSON (anxiously): But they’re just for my hip. They’re herbal soothers.
(With his back to the door, Sherlock stops and shouts out.)
SHERLOCK: Shut up, everybody, shut up! Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe. I’m trying to think. Anderson, face the other way. You’re putting me off.
ANDERSON: What? My face is?!
LESTRADE: Everybody quiet and still. Anderson, turn your back.
ANDERSON: Oh, for God’s sake!
LESTRADE: Your back, now, please!
SHERLOCK (to himself): Come on, think. Quick!
MRS HUDSON: What about your taxi?
SHERLOCK (turning to her and shouting furiously): MRS HUDSON!
(She turns and hurries away down the stairs. Sherlock stops and looks around as he finally realises something.)
SHERLOCK: Oh.
(He smiles in delight.)
SHERLOCK: Ah! She was clever, clever, yes!
(He walks across the room and then turns back to the others.)
SHERLOCK: She’s cleverer than you lot and she’s dead. Do you see, do you get it? She didn’t lose her phone, she never lost it. She planted it on him.
(He starts pacing again.)
SHERLOCK: When she got out of the car, she knew that she was going to her death. She left the phone in order to lead us to her killer.
LESTRADE: But how?
SHERLOCK (stopping and staring at him): Wha...? What do you mean, how?
(Lestrade shrugs.)
SHERLOCK: Rachel!
(He looks at everyone triumphantly. They all look back at him blankly.)
SHERLOCK: Don’t you see? Rachel!
(Still everyone looks blank. Sherlock laughs in disbelief.)
SHERLOCK: Oh, look at you lot. You’re all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing. (More sternly) Rachel is not a name.
JOHN (equally sternly): Then what is it?
SHERLOCK: John, on the luggage, there’s a label. E-mail address.
(John looks at the label on the suitcase and reads out the address.)
JOHN: Er, jennie dot pink at mephone dot org dot uk.
(Sherlock has sat down at the dining table and is looking at his computer notebook.)
SHERLOCK: Oh, I’ve been too slow. She didn’t have a laptop, which means she did her business on her phone, so it’s a smartphone, it’s e-mail enabled.
(He has pulled up Mephone’s website and types the email address into the ‘User name’ box.)
SHERLOCK: So there was a website for her account. The username is her e-mail address ...
(He begins to type into the ‘Password’ box.)
SHERLOCK: ... and all together now, the password is?
JOHN (walking over to stand behind him): Rachel.
ANDERSON: So we can read her e-mails. So what?
SHERLOCK: Anderson, don’t talk out loud. You lower the I.Q. of the whole street. We can do much more than just read her e-mails. It’s a smartphone, it’s got GPS, which means if you lose it you can locate it online. She’s leading us directly to the man who killed her.

Spacedaisy has been sent to jail. Epignosis has been let out. It is now Day 7. Due to someone being rezzed, two people will be lynched instead of one. Each person will receive 2 votes that can be used on separate people. You cannot use both votes on one person. You have 24 hours.