The Darkest Secret of Sherlock Holmes

Before I unveiled it, this was one of this millenium's best kept secrets: Sherlock Holmes had reincarnated into a gay (well, I presumed) Chinese man. How do I know? He lived in a flat on Robinson Road, Mid Levels, Hong Kong. In his present life, he called himself Graham, smoked Chinese made "Double-Happiness" but still shared a flat with a doctor (yes, no prize for guessing, that's me). I believed that he was stealing my prescriptions for reasons only known to his friends from the back alleys of Lan Kwai Fong. As I couldn't prove it, I had to give him the benefit of doubt. I put up with the darker side of his personality as he always left my kitchen clean and didn't mind the eternal darkness and stuffiness of the back room. Cooking, just like working, was for the unimaginative, according to Graham, who seemed to have secured a healthy supply of money by working on the computer for merely a couple of hours a day. Fresh air was also believed to be detrimental to his health, at least mental, if not physical.

Two days after he moved in, Inspector Kong turned up at my door. I'd known Kong for years since the days we kicked plastic bottles in the street. In fact, he was the one who introduced my new tenant to me. Kong was after Graham. They stayed in the back room for over an hour before Kong left looking happy and excited.

"What does Kong want from you? You're not in trouble, I hope."

"He wants my service to solve a few problems."

"Don't tell me I'm living with Sherlock Holmes."

"How did you guess that?"

The conversation did not get far as Graham claimed to be highly professional and would, at all costs, put his clients' confidentiality first. Nonetheless, I started to see some truth in this wild guess of mine when Kong maintained his regular visits and always left with an elated expression. An alternative explanation would be that he was providing some other service to Kong, one of an intimate, or immoral nature. That's somewhat unthinkable but not absolutely improbable. At least, it didn't look obvious to me at all. I had a few homosexual friends and had made some observations on how they would behave when their lovers were around. The former premise seemed more probable as it also helped to explain how Kong was cracking tough cases one after another, getting all the hints and evidence he needed from no one knows where. Kong was posed as the rising star of the police force, in the gossip columns of the Next Magazine. The journalists suggested that he was paying handsome amounts to some secretive and daring informants. I suspected that Graham was the informant.

"How did you manage to help Kong crack those cases?"

"Have I ever asked you about how you managed to enjoy eating the pig's intestines after performing all those colonoscopies? Tradesmen's secrets. Aren't they called that for a good reason?"

I couldn't remember telling him about my favorite Chinese cruisine. I couldn't spare time to figure out why he knew about it as it was time to fight back. "That's fine with me if you're not talking. You are the one who is developing helicosis from smoking too much and not talking enough. Everybody needs a listener to stay sane. I'm saving you time and money to see a shrink."

"Who? You, a shrink? You look more like a psychiatric patient to me, with your obsession with women with torn pantyhose."

"Now what else do you know?" I was getting angry as he was once again right.

"Much more than you're comfortable to reveal." Graham ended the conversation with a cunning smile.

Graham kept his lips sealed. I was cross and embarassed. I left him with his tradesmen's secrets as they were. During the occasions we had small talks over coffee, he did seem to know a lot about me. I presumed he learned this from Kong and was not too surprised. After all, they seemed to be real buddies into something together. Whereas, I was nobody but a nosy landlord, who couldn't even prove that his prescriptions were getting stolen. I was feeling pissed but looked forward to receiving his share of the rent. I knew of very few pains which money wouldn't help to soothe.

I was startled by the door bell at mid-night and opened the door. Kong was there with two policemen in uniform. I explained that Graham was not in.

"Of course he's not in. He's in our custody. I've got this warrant to search his room and take his computer." Kong waived a piece of signed and stamped document at me. "I'm sorry to trouble you. Don't worry that we'll get you involved in this. I'm certain that you are not part of his offenses."

I didn't know what to do or say except for staring at Kong, demanding further explanations.

Kong was probably feeling guilty that he had used me and smiled to reassure me.

"Graham is also Tom Chan, Joe Chow, Steve Andrews, Dr Ed and Natasha Cummings. The list goes on and on. He hacks tens of thousands of Facebook, MSN live, Twitter, Hotmail and Gmail accounts. These include accounts of people the police are interested in. I bet he also hacks into my email accounts to learn about what information will sell to me. He knows enough to make a living on selling information that people want. What he doesn't know is that our super-computer has managed to trace him. We have wired your flat and now know enough to arrest him."

"Shame on you, Kong. He's helped you so much. Besides, what happens to the rent that he owes me."

"Loosen up, Buddy. I'm happy to pay you double of what he owes, from what I owe him and not having to pay any more. Any other questions?"

"So I really know nothing about him. Now just one question. What is his real name?"

"We don't know yet. Our super-computer team dubs him Sherlock Holmes, as he knows everything, just like Holmes, and lives with a doctor."