Free Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? by Paul Cornell Page B

anticipation or warning. It was enough, though, to make her halt.
    She moved quickly aside, suddenly afraid that, should she stay here too long, pushing against this power, the one who had set it here would notice.
    OK, she’d achieved something. She knew where her target was. She’d known there was a hole in the world, but now she had experienced it herself. That was terrifying, but so was what
had pushed her to come here. Now she had to get back to where she should be and work out her next move, work out some way to get through a door she’d couldn’t perceive.
    On the way out of the apartment block, Lofthouse decided upon another experiment, to check in with the more positive of the two powers that were ruling her life. Would the key
react as it had in the past, to push her in one direction or the other? Time to find out. She started to deliberately consider the idea that, having come this far, she would go no further, that
this discovery had been enough. She
felt
the key on her charm bracelet react, and had a moment to brace herself before the wave of depression and misery hit her. She stumbled, had to put a
hand on the wall beside her to steady herself. No, she thought; actually, I’m going to pursue this to the end. I’m going to get inside that apartment and find what’s hidden. The
torment left her like a chemical reaction, and she breathed deeply for a moment, enjoying the rush of freedom from pain. The key was certain about what it wanted. Though she still had no idea why
it wanted anything.
    She made her way back to Paddington Green and arrived for the end of the meeting, saying she’d just popped in to make sure there was nothing urgent that would surprise
her in the briefing notes she’d be sent later, got reassurances that this was the case, then, having thus made sure she’d killed off almost all possibility that comment would be made
about her absence, exited like she’d been there all the time, switching on her iPad and phone as she did so. She had a different driver on the way back to Gipsy Hill, thank God.
    She’d been expecting him to appear, but it was just as big a shock as it always was. As she was reading the
Telegraph
on her iPad in the back of the car, he walked into the frame of
the tablet, that familiar face with a look of slight suspicion on it. A few months ago, on the face of the man himself, she’d have taken that look to be teasing, joking. Now it made her
stomach tense up and her face freeze.
    ‘Been anywhere nice?’ he asked.
    ‘The regular meeting.’ The driver would assume she was using FaceTime. She knew from previous experience that others couldn’t see or hear him.
    ‘You don’t normally switch off your gear in the meeting.’
    ‘I wanted to get away from you for a few minutes. Or can’t I do that now?’ The driver would now be assuming they were having a row. She understood where MI5 had come by their
suspicions, though she didn’t like their implied penetration of her security. Still, she had bigger problems.
    ‘You can do whatever you like, as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences.’ With a familiar little nod, he headed off the page again, and she wanted to bellow, to
kick the floor, to throw the iPad aside. She did none of those things.
    ‘Could we stop at my house?’ she asked the driver.
    The car pulled into the driveway. Lofthouse got out, with as much calm as she could project, and marched to the door. She fumbled with keys, managed to get the damn thing open,
stepped inside.
    ‘In here,’ said the familiar voice. Oh, thank God. She found him in the kitchen, the person she’d seen walk onto her iPad, the most familiar person in the world to her, her
husband, Peter. He was standing in the kitchen with his hand in a pan of water, which was sitting on the hob. Now he calmly reached over and switched on the heat. ‘I wonder how long
it’ll take,’ he said, ‘before this body starts feeling the pain.’ He had done