The Final Solution
The Final Solution
The enemy makes themselves known. Pip and Finn throw a party.
Author’s note: This is the final episode of the current Thorfinn Grimm ongoing story. Here’s a link to the full index so you can catch up on previous adventures. Enjoy!
I’ve been solving mysteries for over twenty years, yet I constantly feel like I’m still getting the hang of things. I’ve never come across one I couldn’t crack, given time. But a new case arrives on my doorstep, and I’m a wide-eyed beginner again.
The truth is, the secret to my successes, such as they are, isn’t a Holmesian intellect or a Poirot-esque understanding of human psychology.
Anyway, Pippin and I threw a housewarming party.
I invited everyone I could think of, which was just Faiza and Mrs Kruger. Pippin brought a friend from class, Mary, a bird-like girl with a pink beret perched on her short blonde curls. There was wine and beer, and everybody seemed to be getting along. Faiza was showing Mrs Kruger photos of her dog, Anubis. Mary and Pippin were giggling and talking in low whispers. In short, it was the very picture of casual merriment. But of course, I had an ulterior motive.
“You all know I’ve been investigating something big,” I said. “An underground organization that operates on an international scale, involved in everything from smuggling to murder to human trafficking. Well, I’ve caught a break, but I need your help. I’d like to take you all through the investigation, so you can see if I missed something.”
They agreed readily enough. We started with Mr Kruger’s confession and his subsequent assassination.
“Mr Kruger was helping someone smuggle things in and out of the country,” I said. “But one time, he saw what they were moving, and it spooked him. His exact words were ‘It was a woman, Mr Grimm. A dead woman in a box. And I recognised her. It was…’, and then he got shot.”
“Maybe it was a celebrity,” said Mary. “Like that serial killer on TV.”
“This was some time before that,” I told her. “But it might be connected so good job, Mary.”
She beamed proudly, and so did Pippin. I made a mental note that I might be seeing a lot more of Mary in the coming days.
“It can’t have been a celebrity,” Mrs Kruger said. “My Phil loved dropping names. If that woman was a celebrity, her name would have been the first thing out of his mouth.”
“So not a celebrity, but someone recognizable,” Faiza noted. “Someone he’d read about or heard of at work?”
“He recognised her on sight,” Pippin said. “So maybe it was someone he saw on TV. I have an idea, what if it was some awful dictator who’s been in the news? Recently overthrown, so she had to get out of whatever country she used to run. Maybe a war criminal even.”
“That would fit the profile,” I admitted. “But it’s not quite right. Who’s a celebrity you don’t name-drop? Who has a face you can recognise but can’t bring up in conversation, definitely not with your wife around?”
A porn star. The answer is a porn star.
Over the course of my investigation, I frequently borrowed Mr Kruger’s old work laptop to go through his files. I’d uncovered a lot of useful information from the many spreadsheets, documents, and emails I found on it. But the most useful thing was hidden behind a fake email ID, used almost exclusively to watch adult webcams and access an Onlyfans account. And there was one model Mr Kruger especially liked.
“Say hello to @RumTumTugger, also known as Emmeline Crowley,” I announced, pulling up the profile on my laptop. “Real name unknown.”
She was a beautiful woman, obviously, with a perfect body and an ageless, alluring face. But there was also something about her that I found disconcerting. She was too perfect. Nothing about her seemed real; every inch of her was an illusion.
“She has one of the most popular accounts on the platform and she’s starred in more than a hundred adult movies over six months. She also makes some amazing make-up videos. Miss Tugger hasn’t made any new content in a while though. Her account has been recycling old footage since the week before Mr Kruger died.”
“It must be her then,” said Faiza. “I’m 99% sure.”
“And I’m 100% sure,” I said. “I’ve met her. She was in this room just 24 hours ago.”
“Why would she come to see you?” Faiza asked. “Why give herself away like that?”
“Because I was close,” I explained. “I’d found all the pieces, and it was just a matter of time before I found her too. I guess she decided to speed things up.”
I told them what had happened.
I was alone in the flat at the time. There was a soft knock on the door, and when I opened it, there she was. She was dressed in a tuxedo, with her hair done up like a silent movie star. In person, her illusory appearance was even more hypnotizing. I simply couldn’t look away. I invited her in and offered her a cup of tea.
“How do these things usually go?” she asked. “I suppose this is the point when the villain delivers a big monologue that reveals the whole picture and ends with an ultimatum.”
I told her that was fairly accurate. She chuckled and said, “Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to tell you that you haven’t already figured out. Even though we’ve never actually met before, you and I have been dancing for quite a while, haven’t we?”
“The Seti Club,” I said, recalling a case from nearly a year before. “An exclusive Egyptology club that worked as a front for money laundering. Your name must have been on the list.”
She nodded. “In hindsight, I should have killed you then. I had to find a new way to wash my money and make myself a new identity.”
“You left the country and opened an Onlyfans account.”
“I opened 7000 Onlyfans accounts,” she corrected. “It’s wonderful what you can do with AI these days. All of them were me, but they all looked different, and I never even filmed anything. Multiple new identities and bite-size laundry schemes, all in one go.”
“But then Mickey Hill happened.”
“Mickey Hill was a drug kingpin Faiza and I put behind bars,” I explained to the others. “One of the most dangerous people in the country. Faiz, do you remember how they bribed a whole hospital to fake his death? We thought it was Hill’s gang that did it, but we could never prove anything. That was Ms Crowley. He worked for her.”
“I see it now,” said Pippin. “She had to come back because you took him off the board.”
I nodded. “And what better way to get in unseen than as a corpse in a shipping container? It’s medically possible, I suppose?”
“Oh yes,” Mary said, and Pippin agreed. “There’s no end of ways to make a person appear dead.”
Mr Kruger found out, and that’s why he had to die. But his death tipped me off about my enemy’s power and influence. She was everywhere, so I looked everywhere, taking on whatever cases I could find in the hope that somehow, I might stumble upon more of her work. And I did. A factory making illegal chemicals here. A fake serial killer there. Mysterious murders, unaccountable disappearances, and more.
“But how did she do it?” asked Mrs Kruger. “How does someone have so much power?”
“She controlled an invaluable resource,” I explained. “Security. So long as you had Miss Crowley in your corner, you could get away with anything. So, when I started taking out people in her network, that was a direct hit on her business. She had no choice but to cash in and pull everyone out: fake deaths for her more public operatives and quiet exits for the shadow players.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t just kill you,” Faiza remarked.
“Yes, I wondered about that too,” I said.
“You might not realize this, but murder is a lot of work,” Miss Crowley had told me when I asked her about this. “Look at what it cost me to take Mr Kruger out. If that hadn’t happened, you would never have found out I existed. When you kill someone, you leave a mark on the world, and that’s a problem for someone like me.”
“Still,” I insisted. “Killing me would have been the obvious thing to do.”
“I suppose,” she shrugged. “But I decided to study you instead. I followed your work, quite literally. There hasn’t been a single second in the last year when you weren’t on surveillance.”
“Now I feel self-conscious. Even when…”
“Especially,” Miss Crowley smirked. “And you know what I found? A pattern. A persona. I hate to sound cliché, but you and I aren’t so different. We’re both brilliant people who find ourselves in a world that has no place for us. You’re still fighting to make yourself one. Me, I made my choice long ago, burned away everything of myself so I could become a walking shadow. I am the beast that slouches toward Bethlehem, Mr Grimm.”
“‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,’” I quoted. “You’re right, of course. I’ve always struggled to believe in myself. That’s my real curse. But you, you’re free to be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do. If you ask me, it was inevitable that we’d destroy each other.”
“So you understand,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “The game is already over. I’m sure you’ve made arrangements to tell the world all about me and my business.”
“Everything,” I nodded. “Except where you’ve been taking all those celebrities you hid away. Am I right that you have people standing ready to kill everyone I care about?”
“Of course. I could destroy your whole world with a word.”
“But it wouldn’t stop me from destroying yours in turn.”
“Exactly. That’s our final problem.”
I lit my pipe and took a long drag, letting the smoke curl out of my mouth like a vaporous dragon. Miss Crowley watched me intently but made no moves of her own.
“I’m used to losing, Miss Crowley,” I told her. “But I don’t want my friends and family to pay the price. So, if you have an alternative to mutual self-destruction, I’d like to hear it.”
“Well, there’s one option,” she said, getting to her feet and taking the pipe out of my mouth. “A solution they briefly considered during the Cold War.”
“She asked me out,” I said, ending my tale. “She’ll be picking me up here at 8, which is in about ten minutes. So, thoughts?”
“Are you insane?” was Faiza’s reaction.
“Even for you, this is ridiculous,” said Pip.
“Thorfinn, I know I just met you,” said Mary. “But even I think this is a terrible idea.”
Mrs Kruger just smiled and said, “You need to do something about your hair. That’s no way to look on a date.”
There was a knock on the door and the protestations came to an abrupt stop. Faiza fingered her gun, and Pippin grabbed a knife from the kitchen. I opened the door. There was no sign of her. Instead, I found a gift box, wrapped with gold-leaf paper and tied with a white ribbon. I took it inside and everyone watched as I opened it.
In the box was a signed photograph of Ms Emmeline Crowley, not one of her AI-generated images, a real photo. There was a message written on the back.
“Dear Thorfinn,” I read aloud. “I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone our date indefinitely. I’ve already dismantled the last of my business and tied up all loose ends. Except for you, of course. I’m so sorry to leave you hanging, but I am glad for the time we spent together. Thank you for the dance. Love, Emmy.”
And that was that; the biggest case of my career concluded.
There is one thing I feel I should mention though, but it’s a secret so you can’t tell anyone. I told my friends I had no idea where Miss Crowley was, or where she’d taken all those people whose deaths she’d faked. The truth is, I lied.
You see, due to the exponential growth in the fields of DNA fingerprinting and global surveillance, there’s nowhere on this planet where you can truly hide forever, not even with extensive cosmetic surgery and perfect false identities.
My mother gave me the answer. She told me that one of the more public individuals involved with Miss Crowley’s criminal empire was tech billionaire Evan Branmusk.
In two days, Branmusk’s commercial spaceflight company will be launching a colony ship to Mars, with over 200 people on board. The media calls them “brave pioneers settling a virgin land” like the early settlers of America. But you and I know that at least some of them are really criminals who bargained for a new life instead of facing justice, just like the early settlers of America.
I don’t know if Emmy will be on the ship. I’d like to think she might stay behind, and that I might see her again. I’d probably have to arrest her if I did, but oh, well.
The End.
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