A/N We apologise profusely. Also, we pre-wrote the following Authors' Note before we took forever to do this. So, here you go.
A/N So, while attempting to figure out what on Earth we were thinking last September, we discovered that we had planned for all this madness to end in 'Chapter 11'. Also known as this chapter. Well, weren't we optimistic? We had no idea how long it would take to transform bullet-points into conversations, tiny extracts into scenes, and ideas into in-text realities. So yes, this should, by rights, be the end. Obviously it won't be, as there's no way we can shoehorn in all the things we have noted for it into a single chapter… Or can we? Read on and find out…
"Urgh! Oh my God, Mum! That was the longest bathroom break ever!"
"Sorry, Luke! But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!"
"Whatever…Tell us about the secret tunnel!" Luke started bouncing on his seat.
"Nope, sorry again! We have to go see what a few other people are doing first. Starting with…"
"Andrews!"
Andrews groaned and turned his eyes up to the sky. Why did this guy have to be here?
"I could have sworn I just saw civilians snooping around our crime scene!" The officer was tall and portly, with way too much stubble to be attractive, and a hat that was too small. The rest of the force joked that it was because the hat couldn't fit his massive ego.
"They're not civilians, Mercier, they're specialists." Andrews explained, checking his phone in the hopes that Sherlock had texted him. He hadn't.
"Specialists? Which department? You didn't notify me - I mean the force."
"They're…with the…international investigative department." Andrews gritted his teeth and looked away.
"Interpol? Why is Interpol getting involved in this? And that still doesn't explain why you didn't inform me!" Mercier was enraged - this was his usual state of being, however, and so Andrews was unfazed.
"Look, they were just in the neighbourhood, and they wanted to drop in." Andrews had a brainwave and turned to face the irate cop. "They were investigating the disappearances in this area, and they thought that this might be related to their case. Also, I don't have to introduce you to every official that enters my crime scene, Mercier, especially when you just want to schmooze your way up the chain of command."
Now it was Mercier's turn to grit his teeth.
"Agent Mully and Agent Sculder are here, and you didn't inform me?" He snapped. Andrews' froze, barely daring to breathe. Mercier already knew the Interpol guys. Mercier already knew the Interpol guys! If he caught sight of the consulting detective and the blogger, if he saw their faces, he'd realise in an instant!
"Yes." Andrews said calmly, his face not betraying the enormous freak-out happening in his mind. "Agents Mully and Sculder went in a few moments ago to investigate. I suggest that you return to your post, Officer Mercier, so that everyone can continue to do their damn jobs."
Andrews turned on his heel and marched away from the fuming man. This was a difficult situation, but Andrews thought that with a little careful planning he could get away with this.
xxx
"Okay, so now that we know Andrews is screwed, can we please learn about the secret tunnel?"
"Not quite yet, Leia! First we need to check up on one other person!"
"Argh! You're as bad as Dad!"
"Well, dear, we are married!"
"Not that we know why yet!"
Louise was unaware that your Uncle Barney had discovered a door in the closet. From where she was standing at the till, everything seemed normal. She saw Sherlock moving towards the back of the bar and assumed he was giving up this location as devoid of clues. She double-checked the till again, so that Sherlock would be unable to criticise her for negligence, and while she did so, the others went downstairs.
This meant that when she looked up, she found herself alone in the bar, and promptly went back out into the alley, so that she could hear Sherlock's findings. Obviously it was empty, so she texted Mycroft.
He looked into the rendezvous point. Found nothing. Took off without me. I am in pursuit. Instructions?
Unfortunately, this text never got sent. In fact the only reason she finished typing it was because she has a texting speed of 120 words per minute. Before she could press Send, the BlackBerry fell from her now-slack grip into the gutter.
You see, had she looked up from her phone the moment she had exited MacLaren's, she would've seen a strange man in a poorly made robe get out of a black Sedan at the side of the road. If she had kept looking, she may have noticed the Taser he was carrying. Or perhaps the gun in the holster on his belt, which was barely hidden by the billowing robe.
But she didn't look up, and so she noticed none of these things. She just got Tasered, dropped her phone, and dragged into the car, which then did an illegal U-turn and sped away.
"Hang on! How can you know it did an illegal U-turn?" Leia demanded, ever the pedant.
"Mycroft reviewed every security camera that the perpetrators passed, and had them charged for every minor infraction that they committed, including the U-turn and running a red light at an intersection. He's a scary man, kids."
"No kidding!" Luke mumbled. He had been on the end of one of Mycroft's lectures recently when he helped Uncle Shock with an experiment in Hyde Park. Poor boy.
The hidden heart of MacLaren's was -
"Finally!"
"Shut up, Luke!"
"As I was saying:"
The hidden heart of MacLaren's was several floors below ground level, so there were plenty of stairs to descend. Yes, it was incredibly cliché, but there was an underground hideout at the bottom.
Well, not really a hideout. More of a storage space, with a few large cages and some parked vans, which were near an exit tunnel - we later found out from the police that this tunnel ran into a disused section of the New York subway that had been converted into an underground road. It eventually resurfaced in a suburb, from which the trucks transported their cargo unnoticed.
Sherlock strode over to a small, cluttered desk on the opposite wall to the cages. It was covered in stacks of papers and lists of orders. There was also a map with several memos pinned to various locations on different continents.
Kids, the, um… cargo… that they were moving. It was actually, er… human.
It was a human trafficking business.
They had stumbled into the central depot. Your Uncle Shock and Uncle John were used to unpleasant situations, given their lines of work, but this was a new experience for your Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin.
Your Aunt Robin, of course, later went on to get the scoop on the whole case and her career as a news reporter skyrocketed as a result.
Your Uncle Barney had some counselling sessions, and he's okay now.
Back to the story.
Sherlock cottoned on to the whole thing with only a few glances at the papers, and he quickly began snapping photos of the evidence. You see, that time when John had recorded a coded message made a huge impression on him, especially since the photo guaranteed accurate recall. He always tried to keep accurate records for the police from then on, as it helped to have supporting evidence for cases.
Uncle John meanwhile, was busy looking at the cages. He doesn't like to talk about what was down there, but I've been assured that there was no 'cargo' waiting to be shipped that day, thank God. He also told me that the cages could probably comfortably fit about twenty to thirty people. He heavily implied that there had been more than that in there at some point…
Robin and Barney stood at the foot of the stairs for a long time before moving. Robin still insists she was 'keeping a look out', not being disturbed by the subterranean underbelly of her local bar. Eventually they decided that the safest place to look was the trucks. They didn't actually find much in there, but they did key sides and let the tires down to make themselves feel better. They were smart enough not to disturb the insides, and so the police were able to get DNA samples and charge several people later on.
If they spoke a lot, which they probably didn't, no one will tell me what it was about. All I know is that Sherlock and John collected as much evidence as they could and quickly returned to the surface to report their findings to Andrews. It was around this time that John noticed Eve was missing… But we'll get to that in a minute.
xxx
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, your Uncle Marshall had been out of surgery for a while. Lily, Ted and I had moved into his room while we waited for him to wake up. It was during our seventh round of foul-tasting coffee that he finally regained consciousness.
"Marshall, bro? Did you just twitch? If you just twitched, twitch again!" Ted said.
"I don't think that's how it works, Ted…" I said.
"Yeah, and the doctor said it could take a while…" Lily sighed. "He probably won't wake up for hours, maybe even days. Let's not get our hopes up, okay, guys?"
Silence fell, punctuated by the sound of our breathing and the various pieces of medical equipment that were monitoring Marshall's condition. I was tempted to look at his chart (again) but then I remembered (again) that I'm only really used to dealing with dead people. The only help I would be able to offer was commenting on the probability of death as a result of his injuries (around 40%, much higher if we had let him bleed much longer) and I was sure nobody wanted to hear that.
Ted had moved over to the window, staring out at the gloomy prospect of the hospital car park.
Lily was sitting next to Marshall's bed, where she'd been ever since he came out of surgery. She was clinging to his hand - I'm pretty sure she didn't move from that position the whole time we were there, actually - and staring at the bandages around his torso.
As such, it was me who noticed that his eyelids were flickering open.
"Marshall?" I said quietly.
"…Huh?"
It wasn't much of a conversation opener, but I've never seen your Aunt Lily look more delighted to hear your Uncle Marshall's voice before or since… And kids, you know how much she loves to listen to him talk!
"Marshall!" Lily and Ted chorused.
"I'll call the nurse! Just stay still, Marshall!" I reached over to press the Call button, but Marshall made a move to stop me and groaned.
"No, wait…" He mumbled, trying to bat me away, but wincing in pain at every movement. "Not…not yet. I have to…have to tell you…Marvin, he took Marvin…"
"It's okay, Marshmallow, the British are sorting Marvin out! Everything will be okay! I promise!" Lily said, gripping Marshall's hand tighter.
"No…the guy that took him…he was Randy…"
"What?!" I spluttered, blood rushing to my face. "Oh my God…"
Ted and Lily gave me a weird look. I feel like Marshall would have as well, except he was still kind of wincing, and so his face was all screwed up.
"Is…that another British thing?" Ted asked.
"Wait, what do you mean by randy?" I backtracked hastily.
"It's a guy's name - in fact, Marshall works with a guy named Randy."
"Exactly!" Marshall coughed after his outburst. Lily reached over and let him sip from a cup of water. "That Randy…he took Marvin. It was Randy."
"What? Nosebleed Randy? Barney's ex?" Lily glanced at me. "His ex-wingman." She clarified.
"Yeah…he was after these…papers. There were these photos of…girls. I think I'd seen them in MacLaren's before…some of them, anyway. And there were loads of death threat memos from a ticked off person called 'B'…it said they were already mad about some renovations opposite the office…and that they had to climb eight sets of stairs because the elevator was…broken. Tell the Brits that he's probably taken Marvin there, if he's…if Marvin's still…"
Marshall slipped back into unconsciousness, and I finally called the nurse. My mind was racing, as I jogged outside to call Sherlock and give him this new information. Hopefully the combination of elevator and renovations would narrow possible locations down, even though he didn't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of New York.
Luckily, your father followed me, having deemed that the medical staff and Lily had Marshall taken care of. And he did have an 'encyclopaydic' knowledge of his beloved city.
"Molly!" He called, as he pushed past the revolving doors. "Molly, I don't know if this helps, but one of my favourite architects, Xenophilius Müschelhausenberg, is renovating one of his buildings on the west side, and it's opposite a pretty big skyscraper. And the elevator in that is broken, because I went to go and get some pictures the other week from the roof, so I could see the trademark elegance and… forget it, this isn't important - what's important is I think I know where those memos might have come from!"
xxx
Back at the alley behind the bar, Sherlock was deep in conversation with a rather disgruntled Andrews when his phone rang. It was me, of course. But you know what I was going to tell him already.
While Sherlock was preoccupied with his whirl of case activity, John assessed the new information and realised that he hadn't seen Anthea for a while. He figured that she must have dashed off on an errand for Mycroft, so he tried to call her.
That was when he heard a tinny recording of his cousin's voice coming from somewhere near his feet.
But now I'm building
Sandcastles in the sand…
Thought I could fly when you held my hand
"Where's that coming from?" John muttered, crouching down to look for the source. "I didn't think anyone listened to Robin Sparkles any more…"
Eternity turns to black and white
"Never found out what that even meant…" John rolled his eyes, holding his phone to his ear and listening to it ring. "C'mon, Anthea, pick up already…"
It was the greatest week and a half
Of my life
"Aha!" John saw a phone peeking out from the grime of the gutter and pulled it out with a flourish. "Gotcha. Who throws out a perfectly… good… BlackBerry?" He glanced at his own phone, then back to the ringing BlackBerry. He accepted the call and the ringing stopped. "Oh, no…" His voice was echoed back to him by the connected phones, and he hung up with a grimace. "Sherlock, we have a problem!" He called, at the moment that Sherlock gleefully yelled:
"John! We have a lead!"
They hurried out of the alleyway, John briefly thanking Andrews for his help in sneaking them onto the crime scene.
Unfortunately, as they ran away, they didn't notice the tall, slightly overweight officer who had seen the whole exchange.
"Andrews." Mercier growled. "Those were not Agents Mully and Sculder. Care to explain yourself?"
He was rumbled, kids.
I'm told Mercier became an Inspector and spent years chasing down a petty thief in a misguided crackdown on crime, inadvertently letting many more serious criminals slip through his net.
Sometimes good people just don't get the breaks they deserve. Andrews lost his job for his actions, even though he had done what was right. Fortunately, he now lives in Sussex and keeps bees when he's not writing crime novels. I'm sure you remember his Christmas cards, kids.
You know, the ones with the dinosaurs.
"But what about the case?"
"Hold on, I'm going to make some tea."
"Don't be too long!"
A/N So, this is the long-awaited update, which does very little to ease our consciences. You know, it's been nearly a year now, and we still haven't finished. Our notes tell us we're getting close to the end… but they've lied to us before. One of our bullet points simply reads "ACTION SCENE", so you can tell we don't really have much to work from… Again, we're sorry that updates are infrequent and bizarre.