Chapter 12: The Pharmacist Who Was Never a Suspect

The blue-white pulse sat in my notes for precisely seven hours before I told Holmes about it.

She had called at six forty-three in the morning, which I was beginning to understand was her standard working hour — the city still grey, the surveillance grids cycling through their overnight recalibration, the Thames sitting low and silver under a sky that hadn't decided yet what it intended. I was already awake. I had been awake for most of the intervening period, the tea long gone cold, the memoir-feed still open on my desk with the cursor blinking at the end of the previous night's entry like a patient question.

"The meeting with Fitch will have consequences by end of day," she said, without preamble. "He'll move on Adesanya. The detention review is scheduled for nine; he'll instruct the liaison to extend it before the board convenes."